CFTC Chair Selig calls Illinois crypto tax a threat to Chicago's financial legacy
CFTC Chairman Michael Selig has accused Illinois lawmakers of putting Chicagos future as a global financial center at risk with its first-of-its-kind state tax on digital asset transactions. Selig has accused the state of moving in the opposite direction of the federal government, pointing out that the government is working towards creating a regulatory framework for digital assets. What exactly is in the new Illinois crypto tax? The Digital Asset Tax Act, signed by Governor J.B. Pritzker as part of a $55.9 billion budget package, makes Illinois the first U.S. state to impose a transaction-level tax on crypto activity. The tax is 0.2% of the asset‘s value on any crypto transfer by an Illinois resident. It applies to exchanges, transfers, and even storage of digital assets, and it doesn’t matter whether the user made a profit or a loss. According to Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) vice president of tax Lawrence Zlatkin, an Illinois resident who buys $10,000 in crypto and sells it for the same amount would owe $40 across both trades despite breaking even. CFTC Chairman Michael Selig recently published a Washington Times op-ed in which he says that the new law penalizes crypto activity while ignoring traditional financial transactions that look exactly the same. “Transferring the