Bitcoin Forum

The recent guidance from the IRS may allow for some very serious big businesses to play some new tax games quite legally. Imagine if Apple Ireland (AI), Apple USA (AU) and Apple Germany (AG) each buy 100000 BTC. Or maybe just one of them at first (AG).

AG buys at 500. Now the price drops to 450. AG sells to AI and can note a loss. Now that price climbs back up to 500, AU can buy them and AI takes a profit.

With the right software counting for various countries rules you could play some pretty serious (legal) games with gains and losses. Apple overall is not selling or buying to outsiders so the net is the same overall.. This could be a new way of moving profits around the globe with no risk. The coins do move on the blockchain but Apple never goes to a broker. All is done by Apple employees. Fees here are irrelevant.

When you add in the complexity of differing rules for differing countries it even gets more wild what you could do as a high powered accountant. Complexity like this is VERY BAD for the little guy, but VERY GOOD for the big company with lawyers and lots of power and money to back it up.

Don't they already do this with dollars?

Why would they need to complicate things with Bitcoin?

Correct, large corporations already have these mechanisms.

If anything, it makes it easier for small businesses to set up subsidiaries and transfer money when necessary.

It makes it cheaper, not more expensive, to execute these kind of schemes.

I don't think you read what I said.  

They are would be doing sales of Bitcoin VS local currency.  Moving $1,000,000 from AG to AU directly as dollars or through a currency exchange has VERY DIFFERENT tax implications than creating losses and gains where needed by selling and buying Bitcoin through different multinational companies.

It might, but I think it still favors the bigger companies. 

move away from the usa to bitcoin friendly countries like switzerland