Sorry your comment has been downvoted to grey. Indeed, the headline is nonsense, payment of tax will continue to be in USD. This is a very silly headline and it's embarrassing seeing it being upvoted on HackerNews.

I would guess it's the "fake news" part that is triggering the downs. Using that phrase is a sure fire way to piss off a subset of all side, but especially people who support/like what the article is saying.

I know it's considered low-quality to discuss voting here, but something is becoming extremely shady with the voting on this forum. Boo be the share of all downvoters too lazy to express their resent in writing and reasoning. Praise be for otterley who bothered to explain it to OP and did his tiny share in building a better world. And wtf for those who downvoted his comment (I'm especially baffled by that one)

Those sound synonymous to me. It’s a payment method for a transaction which in this case is priced in USD. Not much different than accepting MasterCard or checks to pay off a USD balance. It’s convenient for some people, and shouldn’t affect or upset anyone else assuming the government didn’t spend a ridiculous amount of money to implement the payment method.

Technical inaccuracies in reporting do not make an article "fake news." Fake news is the intentional publication of stories purporting to be news that have no factual basis for the purpose of misleading the public.

Technical details seem to matter though. Using the definition of "paying taxes" that TC seems to be using, you could have always paid your taxes using, for example, magic the gathering trading cards. You just need to find somebody that will buy them from you for USD first. I wonder why one of those made the headlines now and the other one didn't...

If you wanted to pay your Ohio taxes using MtG cards, you would first have to find someone to exchange those cards for USD. After you did that, you'd have to go and file your taxes with the Ohio Department of Taxation.

These would be two completely independent transactions, involving agreements between you and two entities (whoever you exchange your MtG cards with and the Ohio Department of Revenue). There would be no connection whatsoever between the site where you arrange to sell your MtG cards and the site where your pay your taxes.

OhioCrypto.com is operated by the state of Ohio. When you register, the TOS says it is a contract between you and the Ohio Treasurer of State. To pay your taxes in Bitcoin through OhioCrypto.com, you do not first change them to USD via some third party. You present the Bitcoin payment information and your tax information, much the same way you would present your credit card information on a site that accepts credit cards.

OhioCrypto.com then uses BitPay to process the Bitcoin payment information, much the same way a credit card accepting site might use Authorize.Net or Braintree to process the credit card information, receiving eventually USD deposited to their account.

In your MtG hypothetical, in no sense would Ohio be accepting MtG cards. By the time they are involved, you are giving them USD. It would not make headlines because Ohio has no involvement.

With OhioCrypto.com, you are giving Ohio your Bitcoin payment information, and Ohio is dealing with having that payment information used to exchange your Bitcoins for USD. This makes headlines because Ohio is directly accepting Bitcoin payment information at a state run website.

Edit: updated to not imply Ohio holds Bitcoin, in response to tptacek's observation below.

According to the FAQ, that's not the case: Ohio never holds Bitcoin for any amount of time, and payments are actually occurring through Bitpay.