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Horacio City Mayor Rodriguez Larreta announced on Monday that Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, will allow taxes to be paid using cryptocurrencies.
According to Mayor Larreta, the Buenos Aires city government will not receive cryptocurrencies directly from the people but instead, leading cryptocurrency companies will convert to Argentine pesos.
"The city will not integrate cryptocurrencies into public accounts, but through an agreement with virtual wallets, we will add a payment option in addition to those we currently have, in order to make it easier to pay taxes," Rodriguez Larreta said in the announcement.
The service will be launched "in the coming months," said Diego Fernandez, the city's secretary of innovation and digital transformation. He also said that local exchanges such as SatoshiTango, Buenbit, Ripio, Belo and Bitso will participate in the initiative.
The announcement comes weeks after the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro allowed real estate taxes in cryptocurrencies starting in 2023.
In March 2022, Buenos Aires released a white paper proposing a blockchain-based digital identity platform, aimed at giving citizens control over their personal data. Fernandez said that the platform is expected to be operational sometime between the fourth quarter of 2022 and the first quarter of 2023.
According to Mayor Larreta, the digital identity platform will include vaccination certification and Covid-19 test results in the second quarter of 2022. In the same year, the platform will include civil status applications and educational records.
