Ohio taxpayers may now pay with Bitcoin

The Treasurer of the State of Ohio, Josh Mandel, has launched an initiative to make Ohio the first state to accept Bitcoin for tax payments. Through OhioCrypto.com, business taxpayers in Ohio may now pay 23 types of Ohio business taxes using the cryptocurrency Bitcoin.

HOW PAYING BUSINESS TAX WITH BITCOIN WORKS

According to OhioCrypto.com, businesses may pay their taxes is “three easy steps”:

1. Tell us who you are: Not registered to pay taxes through the Treasurer’s office? No problem. Just register online at OhioCrypto.com.
2.  Enter tax payment information: Enter business tax payment amount and select the tax period date.
3.  Pay with cryptocurrency: Use your cryptocurrency wallet to pay the invoice with Bitcoin. All payments are processed by the Ohio Treasurer’s office third party cryptocurrency payment processor, BitPay.

Bitpay is an Altanta-based payments processor for Bitcoin. Upon receiving Bitcoin payments, Bitpay immediately converts the cryptocurrency to U.S. dollars and deposits the U.S. dollars into a state of Ohio account. The state of Ohio will not hold Bitcoin itself. To address volatility in cryptocurrency markets, Bitpay sets exchange rates for 15 minute windows and assumes the risk of any fluctuations in rates during the window. There is a 1 percent processing fee.

For now, only businesses may pay taxes with Bitcoin and the state does not accept any other types of cryptocurrency. But there are plans to expand the initiative to individual taxes and potentially accept other types of cryptocurrency as well. Incoming State Treasurer Robert Sprague is receptive to the ideas as well.

BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY

There is some irony in the state of Ohio embracing Bitcoin because the cryptocurrency was launched 10 years ago as an innovative currency that did not require government support. But states may embrace cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology more generally as a way to attract talent and investment capital to their state. The four-day Blockland Solutions Conference kicks of this weekend in Cleveland as part of a larger effort to showcase the city as a hub for blockchain technology. These events come on the heels of a rapid decline in the value of Bitcoin, which is slumped as low as $3,650 since peaking near $20,000 last year. Please check back as we follow the most recent developments.