Chris Borg, Partner and Dr Malvina Mulliri, Regulatory Advisor, from CSA Group, a leading corporate and advisory firm in Malta, delivered an educational webinar to IAPA members defining the types of DLT assets, milestones of the Maltese DLT and the virtual financial assets regime.
Dr Malvina Mulliri began the webinar providing details of the legal framework of DLT and DLT assets and explaining why Malta is on the path to becoming a pioneer in providing regulatory clarity in the application of distributed ledger technologies (DLT) such as Blockchain, the technology behind cryptocurrencies, bitcoin and ether.
Malvina explained how a holistic legal framework was introduced, presenting a new class of DLT assets, and detailed the regulation of their offering to the public and providing for numerous licensable activities. The underlying innovative technology, including but not limited to Blockchain, was subjected to a voluntary regime of certification. The Commissioner for Revenue then issued guidelines on taxation in relation to DLT assets that corresponded with the regulatory certainty implemented by the Virtual Financial Assets Act.
Chris Borg provided an informative synopsis of the taxation of virtual financial assets including coins, financial tokens, utility tokens and hybrids, with the consideration of European Union direct and indirect tax principles and approaches by third countries and ancillary jurisprudence.
Chris explained how the Maltese Commissioner for Revenue, in its guidelines intended to clarify the taxation of DLT Assets under the Income Tax Act and the VAT Act and further detailed the initiatives assumed by other jurisdictions seeking to clarify the tax implications of specific types of DLT assets, and the possible ways of addressing the volatility in calculating the tax base for reporting purposes.
If you are an IAPA member you can view the webinar recording and presentation slides here:
