IRS vs Coinbase users support resource?

[tickets]

Has anyone seen anything in the way of a resource to help those coinbase users impacted by the IRS lawsuit?

The way this first bunch of bitcoiners is treated by the IRS will set a huge precedent for everyone else down the road.
Especially those of us who have net losses but a hard time documenting all the other craziness, hacks, scams, and so on that occurred during those years.   

Seems like it would be in the interest of the community as a whole to have some solid legal expertise available to prevent
a possible fishing expedition by the IRS from wrecking lives, requiring costly and time-consuming analysis efforts.

bitcoin users do many things with the currency that don't fit the model currently stipulated by the IRS for taxation - seems like lots of new legal territory here.

Perhaps Coinbase themselves could step forward and create some kind of tax help resource for those customers they promised to protect?

[TheQuin]

As far as I understand it is too late for any recourse. Coinbase was forced to hand over the records to the IRS, the court case is over. The IRS didn't actually get what they wanted, full records of everyone, but only those you bought or sold over $20,000 in a single year from 2013-15. That affected 14,355 users who should have been notified by Coinbase.

Going forward, anyone transacting more the $20,000 a year on Coinbase knows that information will be passed to the IRS.

There's not really anything that can be done to stop the IRS going on further fishing expeditions other than using services that are outside their jurisdiction or trading peer-2-peer and staying away from exchanges altogether.

[error08]

Indeed, bitcoin users can't avoid taxes if they are using exchanges to trade cryptocurrencies. Coinbase can't do nothing about it, since their business based in the US, unless they are moving to another country, but still useless
The way is clear, over-the-counter trading or convert your bitcoin into fiat currency outside the US, or else, just pay the taxes.

[tickets]

My point isn't about trying to avoid taxes or to prevent coinbase from reporting on their users,

It's about helping the users who could now be facing audits where the IRS rules don't begin to fit how people actually use cryptocurrencies, users unable to comply with IRS or to afford to hire help, an IRS eager to make examples of non-compliant bitcoiners.

We are still in a time of wild experimentation and speculation. For example many were:

-trying to live/travel by spending BTC in many small sums
-building bitcoin inventions like ATMs, arb bots, apps
-speculating on various alt coins that disappeared
-lost large sums to mtgox, mintpal, thefts, etc.  

So my guess is many others lost money, not just bought and held BTC at coinbase ... and are unable to document much.


There are few tax lawyers claiming to specialize in this and they charge crazy fees since they expect bitcoiners to be rich.
If each coinbase user has to seek out such expertise, many could be broken while the lawyers benefit.  

IMO it would be much better to have some kind of common expertise available for the affected class - a 'coinbase victims fund'.

And it's not just for the benefit of the first batch of IRS targets.  The IRS will use their chainalysis software to trace out the counterparty graph and expand their expedition beyond the coinbase records, we can be certain of that.  This effort will ramp up, expand, and will impact a much larger crypto-user community.  How the first targets fare will set the precedent.

[Razon]

I suggest you don't fight with the IRS and just file your taxes like your suppose too.

[tickets]

OK, I guess I'm not explaining this well.

Filing can be a nightmare.  

For starters, coinbase closes user accounts with no warning or explanation, and they have no phone number or email
to respond to non-customers or ex-customers.  So many haven't even been able to get their own records in order to file.

[TheQuin]

So many haven't even been able to get their own records in order to file.

You are solely responsible for keeping your own records.

they have no phone number or email to respond to non-customers or ex-customers. 

That's pretty much standard for all crypto businesses.

For starters, coinbase closes user accounts with no warning or explanation,

Why would you use a service that does that?

[tickets]

Same reasons so many others did.  And coinbase was different back then.

Does anyone know whether coinbase is sending out notifications of any sort to the targeted users, to let
them know they're on the IRS list?

[bitcoinhadi27]

IRS vs coinbase users support resource ?

[TheQuin]

Does anyone know whether coinbase is sending out notifications of any sort to the targeted users, to let
them know they're on the IRS list?

They said they will but I don't know if they have yet. Also, anyone involved should be able to work that out for themselves as it is everyone who transacted above $20,000 in a single year from 2013-2015.