Second Canadian town to start accepting bitcoin for property tax payments

A municipality in Canada has agreed to allow for payments of property taxes via bitcoin through the use of Coinberry’s services. This basically allows owners of properties in the City of Richmond Hill to pay for said taxes with the crypto coin.

According to a press release, the Council voted in favor of entering into an agreement with digital currency platform Coinberry to provide an option to residents and businesses to make property tax payments in Bitcoin.

Earlier this year, Innisfil became the first municipality in Canada to accept cryptocurrency as a method of payment for property taxes via an agreement with Coinberry.

Richmond Hill Deputy Mayor Joe Di Paola explained why this particular arrangement was approved by the city. More than anything else, he spoke of a more forward-thinking approach with regards to digital currencies.

"We believe that the demand for a digital currency payment option is only going to grow in the coming years, especially amongst millennials,” he said. "Our Council was aware of Coinberry's successful implementation of a digital currency payment service with the Town of Innisfil, and since there was no cost and no risk to the City of Richmond Hill to do the same, it made the decision that much easier for us."

Coinberry CEO and Co-Founder Andrei Poliakov also talked about his firm’s role in this arrangement, putting emphasis on the fact that this is the second municipality that they are partnering with. He is also promising that the next several months will see even more of such developments.

“We are very happy to be entering into a partnership with our second Canadian Municipality,” Poliakov said. “Leaders of government and enterprise organizations are realizing that, with the right partners, they can innovate with blockchain and digital currencies. We’re pleased to be working on additional innovative solutions with leading enterprise and municipal partners, and have a number of very exciting initiatives we will be announcing over the next several months.”

It’s worth pointing out that Ohio, US was actually the first state to authorize crypto payments by businesses, Cointelegraph reports. Businesses operating in the state can pay 23 different taxes using bitcoin through an online portal launched by the state treasury office.