Bitcoin is doomed. Thanks IRS!!! You Ass hats!

[serenitys]

If the USD crashes before BTC rises to the mooncoin, I'm probably going to hit up a sweet Canadian and see if he'll marry me so I can go live there instead. I should probably do that anyway - not marry a Canadian but look into expatriating. Or across the pond. America as a land is amazing but the majority of people in it are an embarrassment and embrace ignorance and educational fail.

Plan A though is an experiment...as soon as I make the next BTC purchase (the one that counts, not the dollar test one), I'm launching a website dedicated to my move to attempt to live off grid and entirely from BTC...just to see how it plays out. I'm also planning on investing in an RV to travel awhile and to see if I can negotiate a transaction strictly in bitcoin for it.

It's not my means of work but I'm learning creative ways to make my work accommodate bitcoin.


If I only live off BTC and most of those purchases would be less than $600, and I DIY everything, then the IRS is SOL. 

[jodybay]

It's not illegal. That's good news.

Remember, the IRS only taxes Americans. There are 248 nations.

But the USA is the richest nation on the planet...by quite some way. This will have a negative effect on Bitcoin.

LOL dude if they are the richest why they boomed the twin tower?

[tunafish]

Average Joes are not going to have to track all there btc spending.  IRS has no way of tying you to a anonymous bitcoin address.  Nor do they want to waste time on it.  Pull your head out of your ass.

Shhhh.

I prefer it if others offer themselves as sacrifices, it sates the beasts hunger and so lessens the chance of it hunting me.

this makes me feel better. i was worried that if i spend 50,000$ in a year they might make me pay taxes on it witch i dont think is right

lol.

But anyway, really the people that honestly think---and can't be convinced otherwise---that IRS taxing bitcoin gains will kill bitcoin are usually the hardcore libertarian types that help to hold back bitcoin. Regulation is inevitable and is actually a good thing, it basically means a major branch of the federal gov is saying that they think bitcoin is going to be around and widespread enough to warrant issuing guidelines; this and other agency involvement makes larger traditional finance players (banks, hedge funds, prop firms) take it more seriously as well as other countries then following suit and creating similar regulations and then, even more importantly, businesses will know how to handle it and feel more comfortable accepting it knowing that there are less unknowns about its future.
As for the actual tax implications/recent IRS memo, none of it is really that bad. Depending on your current income bracket, what kind of tax credits you get, and how much income you made from selling bitcoin, your liability could be close to zero.  But if you made like $50,000+ last year just on cashing in bitcoin and aren't paying then fuck you cheapskate, pay your taxes.
As for the mining part, the IRS ruling was pretty silly, they should have just said that anything mined is unrealized gains until its sold, then once miners convert to USD they could be taxed. Sure miners could use btc to buy things instead and you'd get some tax avoidance but I can't see this amount being relevant as far as federal revenue goes.

[cryptoanarchist]

I will be starting a thread challenging the IRS to declare what I owe them in bitcoin capital gains. I want to prove to everyone that they don't have a clue.

[numismatist]

It's not illegal. That's good news.

Remember, the IRS only taxes Americans. There are 248 nations.

But the USA is the richest nation on the planet...by quite some way. This will have a negative effect on Bitcoin.

How about China? Not bankrupt, nor straggling on the fiscal cliff.

[bryant.coleman]

How about China? Not bankrupt, nor straggling on the fiscal cliff.

The Chinese economy depends quite a lot on the US. If the US becomes bankrupt, then China also will follow.

[tunafish]

I will be starting a thread challenging the IRS to declare what I owe them in bitcoin capital gains. I want to prove to everyone that they don't have a clue.

Really? I think anyone that's familiar with including gains/losses on their tax return would find it pretty easy; and for anyone thats never done capital gains/losses would find it about the same difficulty as manually entering your 1099-D. I had to enter values from a 1-K from an LLC this year, now that was rough.
If you haven't kept records or have 1000's of trades and never looked at how much you've gained/lost then it might be cumbersome.

I haven't looked over the specifics of mining and how that applies though.
Have you asked anyone for help?

[serenitys]

I will be starting a thread challenging the IRS to declare what I owe them in bitcoin capital gains. I want to prove to everyone that they don't have a clue.

Please, please seriously do this - not a thread but a dedicated website!! And be sure to send me the link. This is much needed - start challenging the gov to show its hand to the public, force its transparency. That would also do wonders for the mainstream public who, individually, will nearly always agree they have 0 faith in the government, but in a group it all goes out the window. On a semi related note, the sentiment can be summed up like this:

We want the government to stay the hell out of OUR business, and just focus on governing those OTHER people  

[bountygiver]

well you can always try to not associate your wallet with your identity.
No identity = they don't know who own the wallet = they don't know who to tax

For now you can profit from exchanging in other countries that doesn't tax it, but if bitcoin liquidity is higher you wouldn't need to exchange them which makes life easier too.

Still have to pay taxes on "barter income", which is what that would be called.

I am talking about tax evasion here.
So you are totally not paying tax because the wallet owns by nobody/they think is a foreign user in the eyes of the gov't if you avoid making transactions with services with your identity.

[Stratobitz]

I registered IRSCoin.com.

Creative ideas on what to do with it?

[sergio]

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/03/why-bitcoin-can-no-longer-work-as-a-virtual-currency-in-1-paragraph/359648/

I hate to admit it, but this story makes a lot of sense.

We can't legally trade BTC for BTC, we taxes at every level because its property not currency.....

Can someone please provide another, hopefully more positive, way to look at this?

There is hope, a new bill is being passed by Steve Stockman that declares the Bitcoin crypto currency a  currency, and I think that is very good news.

Here is the link:
http://newsbtc.com/2014/04/08/congressman-stockman-seeks-introduce-bill-congress-declaring-bitcoin-currency-property/

I have never heard of Steve Stockman before, but at least the bill he is trying to pass is a very good thing for Bitcoin since it levels the playing field with the dollar ( same set of rules/laws), and makes bitcoin easy to be used as a currency.

There is a very good video  that explains this in very simply terms.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44s-SAkDCic

Basically no more capital gains tax, and make bitcoin easy  to use like it always was.

Normally I am against regulation, but this bill at least the way it is stated on the video it is very good.

If this bill passes bitcoin will gain adoption, and its price will recover from the IRS ruling.

Also it will make paying taxes cheaper since you could easily swap the word bitcoin with the word dollar since the rules would be identical, no more complicated taxes, no extra bookkeeping, I hope this bill passes.

If you look at the bill it looks well written and very precise, unlike the IRS ruling.

So it looks like bitcoin is going to be currency again in the USA and not property.

[amspir]

Basically no more capital gains tax, and make bitcoin easy  to use like it always was.
...
So it looks like bitcoin is going to be currency again in the USA and not property.

I'm not a tax expert, but I don't think this bill does what you think it does.   Currency that is not legal tender of the United States is still subject to tax made from capital gains, except at regular income rates.   To be compliant with tax law, you would still need to keep track of your trades.  The IRS ruling is an advantage for the special tax rates on long-term capital gains, as well as offsetting capital losses.  

I dare say that this bill was written out of ignorance.  The only way not to subject a commodity or property to capital gains is to declare it legal tender or explicitly exempt it from tax on its capital gains in the tax code.

Before attacking me, please read this part of the US Tax code: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/988

[ensarwyckven]

The IRS should be trying to help the American people, by helping the value and price of Bitcoin to go up and stabilize, or they should just stay out of it !

[tunafish]

The IRS should be trying to help the American people, by helping the value and price of Bitcoin to go up and stabilize, or they should just stay out of it !

Maybe they are? Think about it. If you own a large business and are considering accepting bitcoin as payment wouldn't you want to know how regulators are going to treat it, to have assurances that the government isn't going to "ban" it or add fees that make it more expensive than cash/credit/et al? This policy issuance serves that purpose and gives other nations' federal agencies a guideline and gives them notice that if they create an environment less hospitable than the U.S. then they are losing that source of new economic activity and growth. There may be short-term negative effects from hardcore libertarians ceasing certain uses along with those who find paying 10% or 15% on short-term profits---hard to say how many people this is since if you buy $100 of bitcoin, then sell it for $200 a month later, does $10 in tax make that $90 not worth it anymore? not to mention that the IRS' resources are stretched so thin that they can do very little in terms of enforcement.
I know that it's hard not to interpret anything a federal agency (especially the IRS) involves itself in as bad and harmful since that it is so ingrained into the public's minds with so many negative associations, but try to step back and look at this impartially as possible. I'm not saying only my thoughts are wrong but to think of what actual, individual effects this and similar rule issues have.

[RobFordWotWot]

I'm going to expatriate when they tax my coins.

[LostDutchman]

I'm going to expatriate when they tax my coins.

They already have but don't panic!

I have at least a partial solution!

My $.02.

[RobFordWotWot]

I'm going to expatriate when they tax my coins.

They already have but don't panic!

I have at least a partial solution!

My $.02.

Eh. I still say anybody worth their salt should just relocate their gigantic farms to one of the many islands that do not care about (designed for) tax evasion.

[williamj2543]

The IRS is probably going to find the bitcoin core developers and somehow make the transaction fee 10x more than the amount sent, then that transaction fee doesn't go to miners, it will go to the greedy idiots at the IRS.

[LostDutchman]

The IRS is probably going to find the bitcoin core developers and somehow make the transaction fee 10x more than the amount sent, then that transaction fee doesn't go to miners, it will go to the greedy idiots at the IRS.

Well now that one may get you The Tinfoil Hat nomination!

My $.02.

[serenitys]

The IRS is probably going to find the bitcoin core developers and somehow make the transaction fee 10x more than the amount sent, then that transaction fee doesn't go to miners, it will go to the greedy idiots at the IRS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWTQgmCuiCw