Florida may well be the next US state to accept cryptocurrencies for tax payments. “We will accept bitcoin, we’re working on doing that for payments in the state of Florida,” Governor Ron DeSantis noted on Tuesday.
Gov. DeSantis said he had asked the state agencies to find ways to enable this transformation:
“We are working – and I’ve told state agencies – figure out ways where if a business wants to pay tax in cryptocurrency to Florida, we should be willing to accept that,” Gov. DeSantis said at a press conference in Wesley Chapel. The occasion was the signing ceremony of a financial literacy curriculum bill that seeks to add personal finance education for high school graduation programs.
In December last year, the Florida Governor proposed that cryptocurrencies should be allowed for the payment of state taxes by local businesses.
He also proposed allocating funds to “experiment with blockchain technology,” which the legislature didn’t pass.
DeSantis, a potential 2024 Republican presidential candidate, sounded skeptical about President Joe Biden’s executive order for the crypto sector earlier this month. He said there is a fundamental difference between decentralized digital currency such as bitcoin and digitalization of dollars or converting the greenback into a digital currency, which remains centrally controlled.
“I worry about the amount of power that would give someone in a central authority to basically be able to shut off access to purchasing certain goods. We’d be in uncharted territory,” he said.
Earlier this month, Colorado became the first US state to accept tax payments in crypto. The move is likely to come into effect from June this year.
Calling it “the next logical step on the path to digital statehood,” Colorado Governor announced the plan under which crypto payments would match the dollar value of the tax dues. The digital asset payments would be converted into dollars before depositing in the state treasury.
Florida’s Miami, which is rapidly emerging as a hub of cryptocurrency businesses, has Francis Suarez as its mayor and is considered a big bitcoin supporter. Suarez is the first major US politician to announce that he would accept his entire salary in bitcoin.