Florida governor says the state will accept bitcoin for tax payments

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis says he’s taking steps to enable firms to pay taxes in cryptocurrencies.

DeSantis’s comments came during the signing of a financial literacy curriculum bill today. During the press conference, DeSantis said he had directed state agencies to ready themselves to accept taxes in crypto.

“We are working – and I’ve told state agencies – figure out ways where if a business wants to pay tax in cryptocurrency to Florida, we should be willing to accept that,” he said.

DeSantis specifically said that Florida is working on accepting bitcoin as tax payments.

“We will accept bitcoin, we’re working on doing that, for payments in the state of Florida,” he said.

He additionally pointed to a provision he pushed for in his most recent budget proposal that would have allocated funds to experiment with the use of blockchain to optimize state functions. However, that did not pass the legislature. 

DeSantis was clear to contrast his pro-crypto stance with state-controlled digital money proposals floating around Congress. DeSantis said he believes there are a lot of “hazards” related to a federally controlled digital dollar.

“I worry about the amount of power that would give someone in a central authority to basically be able to shut off access to purchasing certain goods,” he said. “We’d be in uncharted territory.”

DeSantis said he’s “very concerned” about the Biden Administration’s executive order on crypto. The order urges the exploration of a central bank digital currency in addition to directing financial agencies to develop policy recommendations related to digital assets.