Yes I am disputing it because it was state law versus the Constitution. And it was a change from the long standing hands off policy on all mail order that crossed state lines. Nobody took it seriously because they know the state is impotent and there was no tracking of everything back then. Certainly the states don't have the ability to track what is happening on the internet.
Also sales taxes are not personal income taxes. They are ad valorem. The only people that get prosecuted over sales taxes are the merchants, not the consumer.
And besides that was a long time ago and the USA has morphed significantly of recent.
You just got through explaining how people are idiots and don't understand anything. Now you're saying they understand the finer points of constitutional law and taxes and penalties for not reporting.
I didn't say they understand finer points of Constitutional law (again and again you try to put words in my mouth to construct your strawman). I am saying they continued to do what they had been doing. I am saying that mail order shipped from out-of-state had always been tax free for all of us. All of us knew that.
The states tried a complex switcharoo wherein if Amazon had any presence in the state then goods shipped from out-of-state were subject to sales tax. They tried to claim this tax was on consumers, but the fact is all sales tax is paid by merchants not consumers. Always been that way.
And so people just continued doing what had always been. No need for them to understand anything.
Any more strawman arguments which deviate from the point at hand?
When someone says, make sure you file your Schedule D, they will say shit I don't need no Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is not 1/100 as compelling as a currency as getting their goodies from Amazon. Your strawman you see.
That is as a currency. Now as a speculation for investment, those who are up for that won't be deterred by capital gains. They want capital gains. I was talking about the impact on the masses of this tax ruling and the effect it will have on sentiment being negative for while until something turns attention back to the "to the moon" theme that is Bitcoin entire reason to exist.
Well how compelling is it? You seem to be boxing yourself in - it's compelling enough that having to pay CG tax will hurt its adoption, but not compelling enough for people to either track their purchases or ignore the IRS?
Are you really serious? You really think Bitcoin is compelling for the mass right now as a currency?
Looney.
Now you conflate two different market segments, the one are the masses who would need to use it daily as a currency and the other are the white males investing "to the moon".
I tend to lose patience with those who repeatedly conflate and waste my time.
Instead of ad hominem useless comment how about actually telling me why you are qualified?
I actually made software for the mainsteam (1 million of them twice) and supported them over the phone and email.
If you want to put me on ignore, just do it. What is this fucking political BS every time you disagree with my right to express my thoughts?
The software issue is you don't understand how even what seems simple to you, is not simple for the masses. That is why I asked what kind of experience you have in the industry.
The software "issue" is just you trying to argue from authority and hoping no one else sees through it.
I am arguing from experience.
When I have to report capital gains, do you think I record all that stuff myself? No. I go to turbotax.com, type in the name of my brokerage and credentials and it imports it all for me. Software. There's nothing fundamentally different about bitcoin that it can't be reported the same way.
I have never been able to get my brokerage to interopt with H&R Block and never was worth the time to figure out. That you figured out how to get interoption is great for you, but fact is there is a huge amount of Murphy's Law involved and this won't scale.
One of Steve Jobs favorite analysis and putdowns to very smart people was, "that won't scale". I know because
my former genius boss says Steve did it to him.
Interoperation friction destroys scaling.
Average people (who generally have a pretty simple tax return) either do something like that, or they just fudge it. In the appropriate 1040 box, they'll just make up some bullshit number that's close enough. Millions of people do that every year, nobody goes to jail because it's small potatoes. The IRS might have an agenda to destroy bitcoin, but they do not give a crap about a few bucks on low income tax returns.
If the masses have a compelling need to use Bitcoin as a currency or end up with a lot of gains unexpectedly, they will deal with it some how and one way is as you say.
However, masses don't have a compelling need to use Bitcoin and the tax issue (in the USA) adds another reason for them (masses in the USA) to stay away. The rumor will spread virally, "you need to do a Schedule D to use Bitcoin". Since most people don't know what a Schedule D is and since using Bitcoin is something they aren't already doing, they will tend to avoid it. That is unless some very compelling reason comes along that entices them to use Bitcoin in spite of this rumor (and the other weaknesses of Bitcoin I enumerated quoted as follows)
You are asking people to change all the ways they think about money:
- Money is now taxable.
- Money takes 10 minutes to an hour to spend.
- Credit cards can lose their balances.
- Credit cards have no refunds nor consumer protection.
People don't change even one thing easily, much less such a laundry list, unless there is some amazing compelling reason for them to.
Rather you are taking the position that masses won't care at all about the tax implication and will willfully ignore it and it won't affect their nexus of thought about Bitcoin.
Again those investing "to the moon" are not affected. Please don't conflate the two market segments.
P.S. Isn't there a $600 exclusion for reporting on bartering? I need to look into that.
