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Comment by klenwell | Hacker News Reader

Among the online services I would like to see my state add, enhance, or simply fix, I do not prioritize accepting bitcoin for tax payments very high in the backlog.

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I left Ohio because the priorities were Obergefell v. Hodges and sportsball. Meanwhile rural areas like Akron are routinely devastated by opioids.

Yay someone else calls it sportsball

It is quite low effort, and probably quite a good value.

Would you be willing to expand on why you think it's probably quite a good value?

Not GP, but if you are a person/business that has a lot of BTC, it's not hard to see the value here. When Dish Network added BTC payment as an option, it was really nice for me.

For someone who doesn't do the bitcoins, it was probably just clutter on the website. It's all perspective.

Exactly what is Bitcoin accomplishing in this scenario? Ohio won't actually accept them; rather, it contracts with a third party that immediately exchanges them for USD, which is what Ohio actually accepts. Ohio maintains no BTC inventory nor any exposure to Bitcoin. Not only that, but this apparently binds taxpayers to Bitpay's exchange rate.

What is this doing that you couldn't accomplish by simply selling BTC and remitting in cash?

Reducing friction when interacting with government. The alternative of using a credit card carries stiff fees (~2%) [1].

[1] https://www.irs.gov/payments/pay-taxes-by-credit-or-debit-ca...

I doubt after you pay the transaction fee, and bitpay takes it's cut you'll be paying less than 2%.

This program charges at least 1% fees. The FAQ is fairly nebulous on the max fee.

Seems like there are easier ways to get payment processing fees lowered for Ohio than exposing tax payers to currency markets.

That sounds suspiciously like the owner of the conversion service knew somebody within Ohio government's IT management, for values of "knew" ranging from "friends" to "bribed".

You do realize that within a margin of about 0.1%, 100% of Ohio taxpayers don't do the bitcoins?

Value of tax liabilities and distribution of the debtors current holdings (BTC vs $) is a better metric to evaluate acceptable payment forms. Ohio state income tax rate is ~ 0.5% - 5%. Lots of 'businesses' don't owe anything. Accepting BTC may increase the likelihood of {high $ debtors who hold primarily BTC } actually voluntarily submitting payments. These 'businesses' would otherwise will be difficult and expensive try and to collect from.

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