Bitcoin Forum

President Biden is seeking $80 billion in extra funding to bolster IRS and tax enforcement.  There is an estimated one trillion dollars in uncollected taxes, and the program will more than pay for itself, boosting tax receipts by more than $700 billion over ten years.  To be clear, this is not a tax increase, but the enforcement of tax laws that are already on the books and which tax payers regularly skirt.

BUT, the interesting part is this:  Under the plan, banks and other payment providers would be required to tell the IRS how much money came into and out of individuals' and businesses' bank accounts each year.  This new information would be useful to the IRS in determining who to audit when a business or individual has far more bank activity than their tax return and tax bill would suggest.  (Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-to-seek-80-billion-to-bolster-irs-tax-enforcement-11619539465 (https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-to-seek-80-billion-to-bolster-irs-tax-enforcement-11619539465))

Now, if you're a lowlife individual or business who is currently illegally underreporting your tax obligation, the new proposed bank reporting requirement is a threat to your illegal lifestyle.  Sure seems like an incentive to start transacting in crypto, doesn't it?

Not really a good idea, unless privacy coins are used. Otherwise, blockchain analysis might get them into a lot of trouble.

At this point, I think it's better to stay offline and keep your illegal activity there as an underreporter or non-payer. Much better than moving to crypto. As far as I know, these guys keep their bank activity in the grey zone where txs are interpretable. Anyway, I have a quite strong feeling that the vast majority of those not paying are part of the upper class rather than the poor.

The upper class is way more experienced and has instant access to experts that could teach them how to avoid taxes while still staying in the legal area, while the poor pay taxes under the fear of messing up in case they try to move just a little bit away from the system.

Hmm, but does this not collide with bank secrecy law though? They are going to peep with bank accounts of entities in order to gain information. But yeah, perhaps there is a difference between personal and business accounts, and in order to survive this plan of Biden's, you need to get an insanely good accountant to cover up your tracks. You can also try and deal with cryptocurrencies if you want, and the privacy it offers is way better than banks at this point.

With this, businesses would be incentivized to use cryptocurrencies to save thousands on their businesses rather than give it to the government.

I see it from the other side, which is that the United States will appear more tax hawkish, which means that more restrictions will be imposed on the sale and purchase of cryptocurrencies, and thus more laws will be legislated to obtain more tax money.
The upside is that it will help the bitcoin price to grow as many companies will buy and not sell to avoid realizing capital gains.
The bad news is that many will avoid the alt currency market.

They do already seem a bit like that though to most European countries where taxes are said to be a lot easier to file (I haven't filed in the US obviously but in the UK you put in your taxable income, taxable capital gains and they work out everything else for you).

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I'm not sure how accurate it was but I saw reports the Donald has reduced tax investigations on wealthier people and left the ones on less wealthy people the same - but I think he also reduced tax to their lowest rates for everyone.

Is the cover for overseas bank accounts also ;)? Another way around this could be getting a bank account offshore that accepts usd or converting to eur/chf.

The new tax plan of the Biden administration is said to be precisely crafted in such a way as to target the wealthy. I haven't taken a look at it but that's what is being proposed, carefully taking note of the new president's campaign promise not to increase the taxes of those who are earning $400,000 and below.

I guess these high-earners will be looking for ways to get away from this oppressive tax policy if ever it comes into effect. This might include the exploitation of cryptocurrency's features.

Tax is one major way that the government generate money to finance her project and if people are running into cryptocurrency to evade payment of tax, I think the government should enact a law to include taxing in crypto to enable tracking of such money that would have come through taxing.
However , Biden trying to increase rate for rich and poor is to try and reduce inequality among the populace and that can reflect in investment capacity.

Buying cryptocurrency is under the laws and exchange is obligated to provide user data to the government, especially when they have any sort of transaction. Therefore, any activity is recorded and transferred to the authorities so as people can not avoid paying tax.

Money laundering can be a good way to buy cryptocurrency. Cash is also an option but as far as I know, involving suspicious activities only make thing worse. The only thing I know that whether they collect tax from the profit you made from the increase of bitcoin. If they do such a thing, it would be very ridiculous

IMO, those tax regulations can not decline the gap between the rich and the poor. They have to have more acts on those richest.

there is no use in adopting cryptocurrency because IRS could all see the data when you cash your crypto to your bank when trading it for USD. IRS is the worse agency in US. they may even look at your crypto transactions in the past and whether you have some stash left.

you don't really have to hide from IRS but its just that it's up to 39% already that they meant to get from you. who wouldn't complain from it so you can't blame Elon to moving his production to Mars  ;D

But wouldn't transactions like this, if ever transacted via crypto, would still in the end require them to use KYC (If they ever use centralized exchanges anyway)? That would still connect their accounts towards their bank accounts, still leading to the IRS discovering that they spent money towards crypto. Now whether where that crypto goes is none of their business, since their only job is to identify how much money from your bank went to that crypto business.

You'd start to stop using banks if you want to actually avoid the policy, and any money that you would transfer to exit banks should not come from banks themselves just to avoid it. Offline/Personal dealings might be the answer, that or someone above could help you manage it.

It would further bolster their plans if they increase the taxes on big businesses and billionaires and reducing the military budget and investing in their healthcare to make it less expensive or much better is free. That means that if lowlife and tax evaders go into crypto, then it will further make it all the reason that bitcoin is used for criminal activities.

Particularly from the country that the person is, knowing the benefits that Bitcoin can bring and making transactions with the currency is the best that can happen, but when supporting tax reforms it is very difficult to trust what a government can give you as guarantees, although It is not the scenario, this makes me remember when there was the crisis of 2008 where they could not raise enough funds for the bonds, and there was the crash ... is it about a world crash announced?

In this case Biden highlights the immense problem that exists with FIAT money, in addition the FED with its constant notices in Pro of Bitcoin launching some intrinsic advice in the statements that Powell has made that says that Bitcoin could replace gold, all these things show that the emergence of a large debt besieges the country that handles the strongest currency.

At the moment what there was on the day it was announced was a fall in the price of Bitcoin. You have to think that most people buy Bitcoin and cryptos on regulated exchanges. I don't know what effect that may have on small fraudsters, because in principle it is logical what you say, but it is difficult today to buy large amounts without KYC procedures.

There are ways to circumvent this to be honest. One of the best ways is OTC trading where big amounts can be traded anonymously. IRS cannot access your private transactions very easily since privacy is a big deal these days.

Op could be right here. There are many criminals around the world who actively trade cryptocurrencies in order to stay under the radar at present.

Wrong. It is possible to buy big amounts of cryptocurrencies without KYC procedures through options like OTC trading etc. So many whales do this on a regular basis in order to stay anonymous.

I am not sure of the veracity of the information, even with a decent source, but anyway, I am just an average guy living in a western country. My earnings, bank movements, taxes and any economic activity that I dare to undertake is certainly registered, watched and taxed. Thus, I absolutely welcome any initiative that is going to apply the same rules to everyone and everything.

Crypto is not there to help with illegal transactions - even if there was some related adoption at first - the big bags are now wall street funds and large companies that usually have better means to avoid taxes. Thus my take is that crypto adoption will not be significantly changed by these measures.

Trading cryptocurrencies wouldn't be a great way to stay under the radar if you're looking to evade paying taxes.  I'd think you'd be more likely to lose money than anything else, given how volatile crypto is.

I've heard that most tax evasion is done by small business owners, which totally makes sense, since they aren't public companies and keep their own books.  It isn't primarily cryptocurrency users, though no doubt it happens. 

And the US government is going to need that projected $1 trillion dollars in uncollected taxes if they want to keep printing money and giving it away in the form of stimulus.  Jesus.  Have we entered Alice in Wonderland or what? 

well maybe because there was a strong push to the Biden government from the IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig who at that time complained about the inadequate income of the budget that had been given by the US government. This effort was made so that the IRS could easily audit fraudulent practices and tax evasion, so the IRS request to employ 4,875 auditors for the purpose of updating the IRS information technology system was achieved.

Doing illegal works should never be encouraged by the cryptocurrency community no natter either they lead to more adoption or helping the market cap to rise. I am not sure what's is new in this bill when already every banks reporting all the user activities to IRS, so where they make changes to lesses the privacy of bank accounts in this new bill?

Indeed, the large company cant hide their company's transactions as easy as they can. Even they protect it by using crypto. If Biden's really serious to collect taxes from every company, so He can use many policies to force the government's income. Banks and collaboration with another countries policy is one of the examples that can he do. Putting aside some of Biden's policies that's pretty weird in my opinion. This is a good policy, to force bad entrepreneurs for paying their obligation. The government have gave them many facilities but they can't give back to the government. This not only happens in the big scale country but also in another country such as my country.

And who exactly will give him this $80 billion then all the people who already pay taxes all the time, it's not coming from his own pockets, and his ''plan'' is to hire more people to work for government and IRS...


Your topic is misleading and I don't understand how moving illegal transaction to Bitcoin public blockchain ledger would make any sense with crypto adoption...
except maybe making work easier for federal agents to catch you and track everything you did online, because they need to cash out at some point with this transactions.
Biden can't do anything good for Bitcoin from his basement with his new regulations, and honestly I think he is just reading the script and doing what someone else told him to do.

And how is that bad news? Except for a few selected altcoins the 99% of them are either scams or coins that are not worth the trouble to invest in them, the US is in trouble they already have the most complex tax system in the entire world and now they want to tighten how they apply their tax code in a moment in which many businesses are on the brink of bankruptcy, in fact what it is needed now are less taxes but obviously this is something that will never come to the mind of Biden and his advisors.

He approved 15$/hr as minimum wage but sometimes is good to think as a politician and not as an economics person. There is always a end where government always receive back this money they are injecting into the economic through taxation and when you do the maths, you will be surprised that the minimum wage was just a value but the purchasing power is still the same and here comes increasingly inflation we have always experienced years ago.

Overall, this is another component of the $6 trillion spending plan by Biden. Nowhere in the world, socialist policies have been implemented on this scale. In short, he will be taking $6 trillion from successful people and profitable corporations, and then distributing it to the unproductive population in the form of childcare benefits and other handouts. Being a non-American, I am happy about this. The American economy needs to be destroyed and China needs to emerge as the no.1 economic power. These stupid plans will just accelerate it. The suburban voters who dumped the GOP to vote for Biden/Kamala will be really excited right now.  ;D

Sure its great idea but some day you will have to use the fiat currency to fulfil your daily needs. We can not rely on the crypto currencies all the time. Yeah, I can do my business with it, get payments from the user in the form of crypto currency but until when?

It won't be possible to hide the loose end. I mean when I am running a business I need supply, raw materials, logistic movement etc. All of these I will have to manage in the form of crypto currency which does not seem to be possible.

If I am buying stuff in the fiat then I will have to show its sell or inventory health to the IRS audit's. They will catch me in blink of an eye when they see purchases are happening but sells are not getting paid in fiat but still my business is flourishing?

This could be the scenario for that matter.

It's not recommended if you want to avoid tax with crypto, because if they catch you, the punishment will outweigh the benefit, or you will lose more money paying fines and stuff. But you can save in crypto and only cash out when the taxes are low (it's legal). You can move to red states as well.

Anyway, Biden's plan supposedly only affects the top 1% or big corporations, right? No chance they will risk fines/jail time by using crypto.

And it's happening:
Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/biden-s-capital-gains-tax-plan-to-pull-crypto-down-to-earth-from-the-moon (https://cointelegraph.com/news/biden-s-capital-gains-tax-plan-to-pull-crypto-down-to-earth-from-the-moon)

Maybe a bit sensationalistic headline, but looks like Hugeblack expected something like this... government rarely gives, and when it does it's like here, with some secret agenda behind... give a little, take a lot!
Of course, this article is all about rumors! Nothing is confirmed yet, but somehow I am sure they will try to take their helicopter money back, somehow!


I agree! Those who wish to try to go against the government should be ready for possible consequences!

     At first, it seems to be a good idea since governments and banks do not chase that far into this industry since it is quite new to the world. But in reality, if they really wanted to, they can tract down every transaction you have. That us if you are someone big enough to waste such efforts for. So if you are, better think twice before creating such plans. Because although there are some altcoins out there with quite good enough amount of anonymity, nothing is fullproof. So be careful. Better abide by laws instead of always having to look behind your shoulders all the time.

It could be theoretically, but I think it's just a tiny loophole that will be fixed soon. After all, cryptos are regulated and taxed in the US, right? So people do have to report them and pay some percentage to the state for capital gains if I'm not mistaken. Perhaps the thing with cryptos is already enforced well enough, so that's why Biden's focusing on fiat. Or maybe he's focusing on the most prospective part financially, and since way more people in the US use fiat than cryptos, it makes more sense to make sure they're reposting their fiat income properly before moving to crypto users.

I would expect Joe Biden to follow the precedent set by democrats in california and new york. The complete opposite of boosting crypto adoption.

Right wing states like florida and texas are most likely to implement friendly policies and laws towards crypto.

These trends hold true globally as well. Left wing states like china tend to be horribly repressive and hostile towards emerging technologies like crypto(which they have difficulty directly regulating and controlling). While more right wing states like iceland and the philippines offer more attractive conditions for crypto adoption. Recognizing the value and job market benefits associated with embracing new innovations.

Don't worry, Biden's already addressed the whole transition to crypto by increasing the capital gains taxes on high earners. So if you're a small business, not too much to worry about because you'd never transition to crypto anyways, but larger businesses get to pay more in taxes, and there is no safe haven in crypto unless you want to tax evade, which is an all around stupid idea. There is no winning here. Sucks for business owners in the US.

Nah, there's no law that protects your banking privacy from the government. The bank secrecy act is actually about establishing requirements on banks to know who they're dealing with and abiding by KYC in order to fight money laundering. The US even forced Swiss banks to start reporting on Americans who had accounts there by threatening to cut them off from the US financial system, so this would be very much in line with what the government already does.

Ah really? Do you think it would be difficult to dig down crypto transactions for them from your KYC wallets? I don't think this is a lot of incentive. Also, Biden IRS also plans to Impose a huge Capital Gains Tax on the sale of Capital Assets and again and again they have clarified that Cryptocurrencies are considered as Capital Assets which means these too will attract a huge 40% tax which is Insane. Also, the term selling cryptocurrencies is Insane. If you send someone crypto for a transaction it can be termed as a sale of crypto as there are no laws governing it?

Banking Privacy is a myth. It is enforceable more prominently to the articles/ things that you store in Bank Lockers, it can in no way protect you from providing information to any government. Infact Banks are the most important and Accurate source of information for most of the agencies due to the huge Transaction logs that they maintain. Banking anonymously is a myth even in Swiss Accounts.

Actually it is not 40%, but more than that in many of the states. You need to include the state taxes as well. If the state taxes are also included, then the long term capital gains tax can be as high as 56.7% in California and 54.3% in Minnesota. These will be applicable to cryptocurrency transactions as well. And each and every cryptocurrency transaction made by a US citizen needs to be mentioned in the income tax return, irrespective of the amount.

Ohh that's Interesting, I didn't know taxes can go this High in the US. More than 50% is like crazy. In my country Long term Capital gains are taxed at a flat rate of 20% and no state Tax is there. I think this is why US is not so concerned with the use of Cryptocurrencies because they know that ultimately it will add huge numbers to their Federal Reserves because they are going to consider every transaction made in crypto as a purchase or sale of cryptocurrencies. So I have a query here? If I buy something from you for example any art or collectible and pay you in Bitcoin, will it still be considered as selling my bitcoins? Because it's not treated as a currency this is a scenario where I am giving you my property and receiving your property in return.

It is incredible that they are so shortsighted especially when it comes to California, after all Silicon Valley was the center of the world when it came to innovation and now they are against innovation, it seems they are being left behind especially since the taxes there are so high and it seems they are no longer friendly to new technologies, and whenever that happens you know that place is in a path of decadence as the only way forward is to embrace innovation and new technologies.

The government defines the taxes and people pay them. People cheating the current tax laws costs the US government hundreds of billions of dollars a year. The IRS audits people to find the cheats and forces them to pay up. The IRS is understaffed (intentionally because of republican deliberate attempts to undermine the system).  So spending $80 billion dollars on more IRS staff will create $800 billion over the next 10 years in people paying the taxes they currently owe but cheat the government out of.  To answer your question, the money initially comes from congress, it ultimately is paid back 10x by people paying taxes they owe.


Topic isn't misleading, you just don't understand what's going on. If banks are required to report transaction totals to the government (which they don't have to do currently), it increases the audit risk for anyone dodging taxes. This incentivizes anyone dodging taxes to reduce banking transactions in order to continue evading taxes, which means either cash or crypto. Since cash isn't particularly useful in an e-commerce economy, crypto becomes attractive for those trying to dodge paying taxes.

I do believe that as much as this is a measure to make sure that citizens do not evade tax,  it'll help promote the adoption of bitcoin in the United States. Truth be told, it is tactical move to curb the evasion of tax by citizens but since this will require banks to send statement of accounts to the IRS, it will cause many to use bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
One of the many advantages of bitcoin is anonymity which means you don't need your details to make transactions. You can send coins to any country at anytime without knowing the name of the recipient. All you need is a wallet address which is enough.

I think the points in and out of bitcoin are very few where you can get convert bitcoin anonymously, and once you're identified you can be tracked because all transactions are public. There are probably ways around it, and there are other coins that may be more privacy focused and make it harder to track and identify individuals, so enforcement will need to find a way close those loopholes if they ever become a large tax avoidance mechanism.

Yes, I believe that no safe haven in crypto is real, I just wonder if their government is ready for a decentralized system. as we know that the government likes centralized systems with easier control and implementation. but let's see what they will do, because the value the OP mentioned is quite huge, if it can't be handled properly it could be the best jokes in history

It will just lead to more and more harassment for the tax payer. IRS is properly funded and doesn't need anymore funds. Those who are paying their taxes will continue to do so and those who are evading their taxes will do that. Just because $80 billion is given to the IRS, there is no guarantee that suddenly the tax collection is going to increase. Democrats got their power after 4 long years and they seems to be in a hurry to print banknotes. Biden has stated that his "American Families Plan" will cost the treasury some $6 trillion. I am not sure whether the American economy will be able to survive such a massive increase to the federal debt. At this point I have only one advice to the cryptocurrency holders - keep your BTC safe and secure. You will need them soon.

The underlined text is definitely false. The republicans have been cutting IRS funding and staffing for years to make the agency as ineffective as possible. The bolded text is exactly the problem, those evading taxes they owe will continue to do so unless the IRS is granted the ability to bring these scofflaws to justice. And the italicized text is a joke. Everyone knows that more IRS funding will definitely increase compliance and increase compliance, it's exactly the same reason republicans have targeted the agency to shrink its ranks.

The 1% that we are talking about are notorious for escaping punishment and having their sentences lenient. I have no hope that Biden's government is going to be any different to the previous administration, most of the high ranking in the administration are in the 1% and also the 1% has a big contributor to the administration in terms of lobbying.

In the case of audits, it's time-consuming and expensive to go after people who are rich because they have access to legal counsel that can really slow down the process and drag it out. The IRS goes after low hanging fruit because it's easier and more cost-efficient given their limited man power.  That's where boosting IRS resources is really going to pay off in the long run as it will allow the IRS to go after the richer people who are shafting the government much more in unpaid taxes.