pull down to refresh
Yes CGT is a gag, it is a very effective state imposed obstruction tactic which makes it quasi impossible to legally use BTC as a MoE.
In autocracies MoE use of BTC it is outright banned.
In 'liberal democracies' BTC MoE has been very effectively obstructed from ever posing a threat to the state imposed fiat MoE monopoly by slyly arbitrarily designating BTC to be a commodity when it is quite explicitly a P2P payments protocol- not a commodity.
Bitcoin is both a payment protocol and a commodity (the commodity is valuable because of the protocol). Only that both are inseparable, so the government chooses to stagnate the protocol by gagging the commodity.
It is a fight the government will lose, because the Bitcoin protocol is the sauce, and it cannot be gagged. It is also a massively better financial system than what the government instituted, and Humans have shown to always choose a superior system over time.
At best, the government enshrines the Bitcoin commodity as the basis of its Fiat financial system, thereby tapping into the efficiencies of Bitcoin's superior protocol, or at worst, they lose out entirely after a very prolonged struggle (perhaps decades or even centuries).
Capital gains tax is applied to Bitcoin because the government views it as aproperty or commodity, not as money.
Bitcoin is both property and money. A property can be used as a medium of exchange, but how divisible and fungible such property is then determines the scale of the value it can be exchanged for.
Bitcoin is divisible enough and fungible enough that it can be used for exchange in very small-scale value transfer, like day-to-day payments, but since it is not a legal tender, the government considers it property. This is intentional to ensure that the government-enforced legal tender does not get beaten out in the competion because if they allow it, then Fiat would certainly lose. After all, by all measures, bitcoin is a better form of money.
CGT is just a gag, and not necessarily a ban. I'm not a tax expert, but I know that if you accept Bitcoin payment and liquidate it immediately, you will not incur a capital gains tax. The goal is to prevent Bitcoin from being a currency.
Income tax applies to both Bitcoin and fiat incomes.