The City of Rio de Janeiro authorized the accreditation of companies that will use cryptocurrencies to carry out IPTU 2023 payment operations. According to the municipal administration, Rio becomes the first city in Brazil to offer taxpayers this means of paying a tax, that will not be limited to just one digital currency.
The decree published today (11) in the Official Municipal Gazette, indicates that the city hall will hire companies specialized in carrying out the conversion of crypto assets into reais. With the measure, the municipality will receive 100% of the value in local currency, at no additional cost to the capital.
For Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes, the initiative puts the city at the forefront of the crypto market by stimulating the circulation of these coins in the economy. “Rio de Janeiro is a global city. Therefore, we are following the technological and economic advances in the universe of digital financial assets. We look to the future and we want to help it become the country’s capital of innovation and technology. And we’re already ahead. We are the first city in Brazil to offer this type of payment to the taxpayer”.
The decree also defines that companies interested in offering this type of payment to their customers, among other obligations, must be accredited with the municipality, have a CNPJ, keep the registration of their customers updated in a similar way to the determinations of the Central Bank of Brazil to financial institutions and have a service provision contract with one of the city’s collection banks. The list of accredited companies will be available on the virtual page of the Municipal Treasury, at site gives Municipal Department of Finance and Planning.
To analyze the use of cryptocurrencies, the city will monitor the information on the pace of payments through a daily report. The Secretary of Finance and Planning, Andrea Senko, said that initially, the use of cryptocurrencies as a form of payment will only be for IPTU, but the intention is to extend it to other taxes. “We want to assess how the city will behave with this new payment method so that we can include it in other taxes in the future”, she revealed.
