Ohio Approves The Use Of Bitcoin To Pay Taxes

Ohio has now become the first state in the United States to officially accept cryptocurrency for tax payments. Businesses in the area are now able to pay their taxes in bitcoin.

Ohio-based companies who want to use cryptocurrency for their next tax payment must first head to OhioCrypto.com and register to pay their taxes in bitcoin. The new payment option is applicable to everything, such as employee withholding taxes and cigarette sales taxes, as pointed out by the Wall Street Journal.

The initiative is limited to businesses as of the moment, but Ohio is expanding it to individual filers in the near future. This way everyone will have access to the new tax payment mothod. At the same time, it will help bitcoin gain traction as a form of payment.

Ohio has partnered with cryptocurrency payment startup BitPay for the initiative. The latter handles all the payments and converts the bitcoin businesses are paying the state into dollars.

The state’s move to accept cryptocurrency for tax payments is the brainchild of Ohio state treasurer Josh Mandel, according to TechCrunch. The idea behind it is to give Ohio a more tech-friendly image. Cryptocurrency has gained a lot of hype in the recent years, but its applications in the society have been somewhat limited.

Whether or not people in Ohio will embrace the use of digital currencies to settle their taxes remains to be seen. But for now, becoming the first state to accept bitcoin is a big step for Ohio.

Arizona, Georgia and Illinois have also come up with initiatives to consider bitcoin for tax payments. Unfortunately, their efforts failed to pass state legislatures. Many other states in the southeast, southwest and midwest are pushing for the same thing as of late.

The news comes at a time when the cryptocurrency market is said to be experiencing a state of rapid collapse. There are several speculations behind the crypto crash among them is the belief that crypto investors got worried after hearing the news that Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices recorded steep sales declines for their cryptocurrency equipment business, as pointed out by Fortune.