Governments, OECD Eye Blockchain Potential for Tax Collection

Tax authorities looking to reap the potential of blockchain platforms to manage increasingly large and complex amounts of data are looking at how to use the technology to collect sales, withholding, and property taxes.

The popularization of blockchain has already seen cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin shake up mainstream finance and change how multinationals manage critical information like supply chain data. Tax officials are seizing a chance to streamline their own operations in way that could one day lead to a whole-sale overhaul of how entire bureaucracies operate, tax professionals say.

“With blockchain, it’s an opportunity like the internet in the 1990s,” ...