Item — HN Reader

Ah, now I see the point.

In the UK I believe it's possible to agree a salary/payment at an amount of recognized currency, such as GBP or USD, and then you perform all your tax and related calculations based on that. How the payment is actually transferred is, potentially, up to the people involved.

I believe that I can contract my services at, say, 100 GBP per hour, bill for one hour, and then accept payment in bitcoin, stating that there is an agreed rate of exchange. If the stated underlying rates are not regarded as "unusual" by the HMRC then most likely the arrangement would be permitted to stand.

There are laws concerning "payment in kind" and I think this would fall under that. Note, I'm not an accountant or lawyer, but I've seen barter arrangements not dissimilar to this accepted as valid by HMRC.

1 comments

In the US, you can arrange payment "in kind" for lodging, food, and "other facilities", but they are accounted for in dollar-denominated values and their fair market value can be determined by the government --- and likely will be, as fair-market value for in-kind compensation is a hotbutton issue for people who want to e.g. screw their housekeepers out of wages.

FLSA 3(m), also read the section in the FLSA handbook about "scrip" and "tokens" (which I understand bitcoin isn't --- scrip, which cannot lawfully be used as a wage substitute, only as an accounting mechanism for dollar-denominated wages) is at least backed by the full faith and credit of a company.

Perhaps that all means that you can pay in BitCoin, provided you assign a fair and reasonable exchange rate with the USD at the time?

Or, perhaps trying to do that would put you on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars in penalties.