Bitcoin investors' personal information will be leaked. Belgian tax authorities are tracking down tax evaders

Belgium’s tax authorities are starting to take cryptocurrency taxation seriously.

According to The Brussels Times, the Special Tax Inspection (STI) of Belgium has begun investigating a case involving three Belgians after receiving information from Finnish authorities about their transactions on Finnish cryptocurrency exchanges.

Under regulations implemented in Belgium late last year, any cryptocurrency investor must pay a 33% profit tax and must report that income in the “miscellaneous income” column of their tax return.

Currently, the STI is moving slowly in the area of ​​cryptocurrency taxation, as most cryptocurrency transactions in the country are conducted on cryptocurrency exchanges abroad.

Nonetheless, the STI is cracking down on cryptocurrency tax evaders in the country, and this is just the beginning. As Francis Adyns, a spokesperson for the Belgian Federal Public Service (FPS) Finance, noted:

In this area, the Belgian tax authorities still have a lot of work to do.

To achieve its goals, STI is relying heavily on external collaboration.

In each of the above cases, the STI obtained the necessary tax information from the as-yet-unnamed foreign tax authorities. The STI also required the cryptocurrency exchanges to cooperate with it and hand over information on Belgian investors.

Belgium isn’t the only country looking to keep a hold of its citizens’ cryptocurrency profits.

At the end of last month, Coinbase issued an official announcement that the trading platform will hand over the data of more than 13,000 users to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

However, as the cryptocurrency market matures, more and more government agencies may want to get a piece of the pie.