Indonesia considers capital gains tax on cryptocurrency trades

Neilmaldrin Noor, a spokesperson for the Indonesian Directorate General of Taxes, said that the authority is considering a tax scheme for capital gains generated from cryptocurrency trades, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

“It is important to know that if there is a profit or capital gain generated from a transaction, the profit is an object of income tax,” the official stated. Noor said that Indonesian taxpayers who receive capital gain from crypto trades would have to pay the tax and report it to the government. 

The official noted that the new crypto tax scheme for capital gains has not been implemented and is still under discussion. 

The latest news comes weeks after Indonesia’s Commodity Futures Trade Regulatory Agency, or Bappebti, was reported to be considering a tax on all cryptocurrency transactions. As part of the proposal, the authority reportedly planned to automatically deduct the tax from transactions by 13 crypto exchanges operating under Bappebti’s regulatory oversight. An executive at Bappebti stated that the actual tax rate had not been determined as of late April.

Indonesia’s latest crypto tax proposals follow years of a blanket ban on payments made in cryptocurrencies. The country’s central bank issued a regulation banning the use of crypto in payment systems back in 2017, outpacing similar bans in other jurisdictions such as Russia and Turkey.