El Salvador exempts foreign crypto investors from taxes, while over 500,000 users signed up in its Bitcoin wallet

El Salvador announced the country is looking to exempt foreign investors from taxes on Bitcoin profits to encourage foreign investment. While “over half a million users” have registered in the country’s Chivo Bitcoin wallet, President Nayib Bukele said.

According to Javier Argueta, the legal advisor to El Salvador’s President, the policy aims to encourage entrepreneurs and investors to migrate into the region.

He also revealed that the country is liaising with international agencies to make sure it adheres to financial regulations. In June the President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, announced that his government was willing to grant permanent residency to people who invest up to 3 Bitcoin in the economy.

Often, it can be hard for Bitcoin speculators to figure out how much they owe in taxes (or how to minimize the amount they’ll need to pay), at least as it can be in the United States. But now, El Salvador’s making it clear that Bitcoin speculators won’t actually have to pay anything when tax season comes.

“If a person has assets in Bitcoin and makes high profits, there will be no tax. This [is done] obviously to encourage foreign investment,” One of Bitcoin enthusiast President Nayib Bukele’s legal advisers, Javier Argueta, said in an interview with AFP. “There will be no taxes to pay on either the capital increase or the income.”

Also, on Sept. 8, El Salvador rolled out a digital wallet known as the “Chivo Wallet,” but the system has often been down for maintenance. It may have been overloaded by the sheer number of Salvadorans looking to take advantage of the $30 bonus that the government put in each account to incentivize adoption.

The president also reported that the 200 ATMs installed in different parts of the country “work perfectly,” as well as the 50 ATMs that were enabled in the US cities of San Francisco, El Doral, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, El Paso, Houston, Laredo, and McAllen.

El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele has been feting the success of the country’s Chivo Bitcoin app and wallet, claiming that it has “over half a million users,” or around 8% of the country’s population. He also admitted that technical issues had blighted the launch.

As reported before, El Salvador became the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender on Sept. 7.  Digital money is now recognized by a nation-state as lawful monetary tender, being put in the same national status as the US dollar in the country.

Image source: https://oicanadian.com/el-salvador-exceeds-500000-users-of-its-bitcoin-wallet-and-opens-atms-in-the-us/