The Contents of Intertax, Volume 54, Issue 8/9, 2026

We are happy to inform you that the latest issue of the journal is now available and includes the following contributions:

Sourcing the Unsourceable: Cross Border Tax Implications of Cryptographic Dealings

The emergence of cryptocurrencies almost twenty years ago has created unprecedented challenges to dozens of tax systems globally and to thousands of bilateral tax treaties. Despite widespread use, tax authorities from all over the world have struggled to develop comprehensive regulatory tax frameworks addressing the unique characteristics of the cryptographic assets including their virtual and decentralized nature, their high price volatility, their pseudo-anonymity nature, and high liquidity. Without exception, most of the OECD Member States have currently only issued guidance on cryptographic taxation based on existing statutes that had been developed in a much less cross-border capital mobile reality and when national economies were not as open and as impacted by cross-border trade, and nonetheless have not yet developed a novel tailored comprehensive tax legislation for taxing crypto dealings. The article examines critical deficiencies in the current tax regulatory frameworks, particularly regarding cross-border taxation both within domestic tax systems of developed countries and within the cross-border tax rules codified in all three bilateral model tax conventions (MTCs). It proposes targeted measures to preserve the crypto tax base as the increasing cross-border mobility of crypto dealings threatens to unjustly undermine countries’ ability to effectively exercise their taxing rights over crypto income and gains.

Crypto Investment Funds and the Limits of US Tax Law: Functional Classification and Global Regulatory Convergence

The current article examines the existing gap between the economic substance of cryptocurrencies and their classification under the US tax law for which the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has maintained a ‘property’ baseline for these digital assets since 2014. This classification creates significant distortions for pooled investment vehicles whereby outcomes often depend more on the legal ‘wrapper’ than on the underlying asset’s economic function. These distortions lead to ‘wrapper engineering’ where funds prioritize tax efficiency over investor protection and optimal risk-return profiles. The article proposes a functional classification approach to alleviate this via three primary contributions: a Functional Exposure Test for registered investment companies (RICs); a Four-Factor Framework for counting spot-token income as ‘commodities’; and a Reporting Interoperability Solution harmonizing domestic US reporting with international standards (such as the Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) and Markets in Crypto-asset (MiCA)) to reduce compliance friction and leverage global market-integrity signals. By shifting toward objective market facts and existing administrative infrastructure, it is argued in the article that a more neutral, administrable, and internationally aware tax regime for the digital asset era is needed.

Crypto-Asset Taxation in Italy: A Teenager in an Old Man’s Suit?

Italy introduced a dedicated crypto-asset tax regime in 2023 that is broadly modelled on its longstanding financial income tax system. The regime primarily governs the taxation of capital gains and other income from crypto-assets for individuals, thereby offering initial legal certainty for users and service providers. However, it establishes a single set of rules for all crypto-assets regardless of their functions or underlying rights and leaves several stages of the crypto-asset lifecycle and many asset-specific tax issues insufficiently addressed. This article analyses the regime’s core design features through the lenses of efficiency and equity and assesses the framework’s ‘future-proof’ capacity in light of rapid technological change with specific attention focused on decentralized finance (DeFi), asset-tokenization, stablecoins, and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). Finally, it examines enforcement challenges and shows how reliance on the traditional ‘third party tax agent’ model struggles to accommodate the anonymity (or pseudo-anonymity), decentralization, transaction-composability, and a-territoriality of crypto-assets. Against this background, the article identifies potential policy adjustments and alternative compliance mechanisms to enhance the effectiveness and resilience of the Italian framework.

Taxing Crypto-Assets in Indonesia: Commodity-Based Approach and Its Pitfalls

Indonesia has one of the fastest-growing and most dynamic crypto-asset markets, but the tax consequences of its simplified and blanket regime remain underexplored. This article analyses the evolution of Indonesia’s crypto-asset taxation framework from intangible commodities to digital financial assets. The latest reclassification represents a pivotal regulatory transition by eliminating VAT, applying a single transaction tax, redefining crypto-assets as financial instruments, and leaving central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) untaxed. This study employs a doctrinal and comparative analysis with India and the European Union (EU) countries and ascertains that the taxonomy change largely constitutes a nominal redefinition as the tax treatment continues to mirror commodity-based levies. It highlights key pitfalls in Indonesia’s simplified framework (including ambiguous definitions, regressive burdens, high reliance on withholding agents, and unworkable deterrent rates). It also underscores the opportunities and risks in aligning crypto-asset taxation with financial market regulation and the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF). The study argues that sustainable reform requires adopting functionally grounded classifications and methods of tax treatment that balance efficiency, equity, and adaptability in Indonesia’s rapidly expanding digital economy. These findings may extend to other emerging economies with robust and fast-growing crypto-asset markets where governments face similar challenges in balancing innovation, regulation, and taxation.