Citizens in the Bahamas can pay taxes using Digital Assets

On 20 April 2022, the Office of the Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas issued a policy white paper for the future of digital assets in the country. The paper sets out a vision and a framework to guide Bahamian digital asset policy to 2026 targeting to attract significant digital asset business and transform into leading digital asset hub in the Caribbean country.

The tax policies in the White Paper are highlighted as below.

• Bahamians are allowed to pay taxes using Sand Dollars, the Central Bank Digital Currency issued by the Central Bank of The Bahamas.
• The government will endeavour to ensure that digital assets are not used for the evasion of taxes or sanctions and will seek to ensure compliance with all applicable Tax information exchange agreements (TIEA) and domestic laws and agreed OECD standards.

In summary, its tax policy in crypto is not attractive compared with other Caribbean countries like Panama that we covered before. The Commonwealth country does not plan to offer low tax rates on crypto and only accept tax payment in the digital assets issued by them.

As this is only white paper without specific policies, let's wait and see.