Australia Creates Crypto Oversight Task Force and Looks to Exclude Cryptos from Foreign Currency Taxes

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(Kitco News) – Australia is tightening its grip on its growing crypto economy after the Australian Federal Police (AFP) announced it has established a new unit designed to specifically focus on monitoring crypto-related transactions.

Following an increase in the use of cryptocurrencies to facilitate criminal activity since the AFP made its first crypto seizure in early 2018, the agency decided to set up a dedicated crypto team in August, according to Stefan Jerga, the AFP’s national head of criminal assets. order of confiscation.

The new unit comes as the AFP reportedly surpassed its goal of raising $600 million in revenue two years ahead of schedule, a goal originally set by the AFP-led Criminal Assets Confiscation Taskforce and expected to be reached by 2024.

The $600 million in assets were seized by the AFP after being linked to financial crimes. The seizures include $380 million in residential and commercial real estate, $200 million in cash and bank accounts, and $35 million in cars, boats, airplanes, artwork, luxury items, and cryptocurrencies.

Stefan Jerga, the national head of the AFP’s Criminal Assets Confiscation Command, suggested that the crypto gains seized were small compared to “traditional” criminal assets such as property and cash, but the added focus has provided major intelligence insights.

“It’s focused on assets, but it also provides the valuable investigative tracking capability and lens for all of our commands across all of our businesses, whether they’re national security-related, child protection, cyber — or the ability to track cryptocurrency transactions across the relevant blockchains are very, very important,” Jerga said.

Australian Treasury seeks public comment on draft legislation

In other developments outside of Australia, the country’s ministerial department of the Treasury has reached out to the public to seek consultation on draft legislation that would exclude cryptocurrencies from being taxed as foreign currency if passed.

In a press release dated June 22, Assistant Treasurer Stephen revealed the Australian government’s intention to exclude cryptocurrencies from “foreign currency tax regimes under the Albanian government.”

“This clarification will deliver a consistent tax requirement for owners of cryptoassets and will be backdated to July 1, 2021 to avoid ambiguity following the decision by the Government of El Salvador,” Stephen said in the release.

Now the public is asked to make comments on the bill and will be able to do so from 6 September to 30 September.

According to the announcement, “the draft legislation is dependent on amending the existing definition of digital currency in the GST Act (A New Tax System (Goods and Services Tax) Act 1999) before adopting it as an exclusion from the definition of foreign currency in the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 .”


GST is a broad-based tax levied on goods, services and goods sold or consumed in Australia. As seen in the comments above, this move to exclude cryptocurrencies as foreign currency is a direct result of El Salvador adopting Bitcoin as legal tender. With that, the Australian government is trying to minimize the potential uncertainty associated with the taxation of cryptocurrencies.