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Court Rules IRS Can Seek Information on Bitcoin Customers

wsj.com

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Re: Court Rules IRS Can Seek Information on Bitcoin Customers

#81

Post by PKop »

digler999 wrote: post #69

I get that taxes are one of the few certainties of life, but this article makes me think of yesterdays "how to hide $400m" article about tax sheltering and offshore incorporation. I wish there were a way to ruin tax sheltering for the wealthy by finding out the exact formula for what they're doing (say register a business in the Cook Islands ), then commoditizing that via an online service (like Wordpress does for we…

Simplify the law, remove sheltering opportunities/loopholes, and lower rates?

Lower them to a point at which it isn't worth the cost to shield, and get more out of them than what we are losing to the sheltering.

Re: Court Rules IRS Can Seek Information on Bitcoin Customers

#82

Post by wav-part »

eschaton wrote: post #34
Chris2048 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What country do you live in that's solved the healthcare and unemployment problem? > people who use what we all pay for, then try to not pay for their part by evading taxes But tax is not flat rate. The poorest often pay the least tax, but use public facilities the most; how is that "pay[ing] for their part"?

The poorest often pay the proportion of their income they can least afford to lose in taxes: A person who makes a million a year paying 50% is more able to afford it than a person making $10000 a year and paying 10%, because there's a nonzero floor to the cost of living. Learn some about diminishing marginal utility. (Also note that you need to consider all taxes, not just income taxes, when considering tax burden.)

I will learn about your stupid riddles when its perfectly clear to me what you are doing. You are stealing from me. If I buy I loaf of a bread I am more than happy to pay for it but dont think I am ok with you extorting percentage of my income for it. Fk Off man.

Re: Court Rules IRS Can Seek Information on Bitcoin Customers

#83

Post by normandoorman »

There is a huge flaw in this logic from the IRS. If it is a possession, then I can give it away. Like a fudgable dollar I gift away, you cannot tax me on every transaction that doller is engaged in.if I give away the wallet and the dollar, nothing changes. The USA is just trying to stop bit coin with taxes.

Re: Court Rules IRS Can Seek Information on Bitcoin Customers

#84

Post by wav-part »

pjc50 wrote: post #47
delegate wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your whole scheme is just Bolshevism with the terminology changed. Bolshevism excludes private property and implements the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is a different form of government. What I propose is a system in which normal people are involved in day-to-day politics - with their votes and their money. The representative system that most 'democracies' implement today do so because until recently ther…

I suspect the result would be more like allowing newspaper comment sections to run the world. People don't have the knowledge, responsibility or involvement for this. Engagement will be low, and therefore the system will be taken over by cranks. Local councils already suffer minor versions of this problem. I'm reminded of the UK's "Police and Crime commissioners", an attempt at getting democratic involvement in polic…

A voter can choose to vote same as somone who he trust and judged to be knowledgable.

Re: Court Rules IRS Can Seek Information on Bitcoin Customers

#85

Post by briHass »

dragonwriter wrote: post #76
vessenes wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I'm not a CPA, I have spent many dollars and hours since 2011 on Bitcoin tax questions in the US, so here's my two cents: In general the US requires consistent treatment of inventory for earnings calculations. It's a little weird to have to worry about that as just a consumer, but if the coins are property and being held then sold, you probably should keep track of gains and losses. Now, you discuss the questio…

> If you want to change your inventory accounting methods you definitely need to calculate out a charge (or credit) for the switch. I thought (and I could be wrong) that the normal thing to do with LIFO/FIFO as to track it as if specific lots were sold (even if those aren't the actual items sold), so that if you switched between them you just changed the order in which you were treating the remaining (accounting, rat…

That's how I do it with mutual fund shares, which would be a similar situation to Bitcoins due to it all technically being one "pot".

If you use a tax-lot specific accounting method FIFO/LIFO/highest cost/other specific, you just need to track which "lots" you've already sold out of (fully or partially), and ensure that you don't sell something twice. Now, if you used average cost at some point, you're kinda screwed if you want to switch to specific lot.

Re: Court Rules IRS Can Seek Information on Bitcoin Customers

#86

Post by wav-part »

smokeyj wrote: post #68
ceejay wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There appears to be some merit to what you're proposing. But what about long-term issues, such as climate change, etc. How are a group of people going to convince a large enough group to pay money for it, and who is going to enforce it? Also, things that don't affect majority of people will probably never get enough funding. For example blindness. How many blind people do you know? And do you think anyone is going to…

OP was making a principled stance for a more direct democracy. When you argue against a more direct democracy, doesn't that make you scratch your chin and wonder if you really support democracy at all? Do you really support your fellow man and his pursuit of happiness, or do you know what's best for him and wish to dictate how he lives. Based on what you wrote, you don't support democracy at all - which may possibly…

Democracy is socially-accepted extortion from successful. So any proposed Democracy 2.0 that reduce welfare spending, will be met with opposition from people. This predicts quite many behaviours of people that supposedely support Freedom/Independece/etc.

Re: Court Rules IRS Can Seek Information on Bitcoin Customers

#87

Post by normandoorman »

throwawayqwer wrote: post #22

Say someone bought Bitcoins from Coinbase and transferred them to their own wallet outside of Coinbase. They haven't sold them, so there's no taxes to pay and nothing to report to the IRS, right? How is the IRS going to know the difference between that situation, where they have done nothing wrong, and someone who sold them outside of Coinbase and didn't pay taxes on it? Are they just going to audit everyone over som…

Every transaction on the block chain is a taxable event. You need a program to calculate capital gains or losses for the tax year. That is my understanding. So you have a daily value, transaction fees, capital gain or loss.

Re: Court Rules IRS Can Seek Information on Bitcoin Customers

#89

Post by FireBeyond »

normandoorman wrote: post #83

There is a huge flaw in this logic from the IRS. If it is a possession, then I can give it away. Like a fudgable dollar I gift away, you cannot tax me on every transaction that doller is engaged in.if I give away the wallet and the dollar, nothing changes. The USA is just trying to stop bit coin with taxes.

That's kinda close to "I'm not going to pay you for what I bought. But I am going to transfer ownership of my wallet here which just happens to have cash in it to cover what you were asking for. But be clear, I'm giving you the wallet. Not paying you."

Re: Court Rules IRS Can Seek Information on Bitcoin Customers

#90

Post by mullen »

wav-part wrote: post #75
CPLX wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are several places in the world that don't have functioning governments. Perhaps you could go live in one for awhile and report back.

Just because I am born in USA, does not mean I consent to being income taxed.

Again, if you don't like the USA and its taxes, you are free to relocate to a country that does not have a functioning government.
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