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IRS sends warning letters to more than 10k cryptocurrency holders

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Re: IRS sends warning letters to more than 10k cryptocurrency holders

#41
Chuck Rettig, the new IRS commissioner comes from a tax litigation background. He's got a lot of experience and is preparing for one of the next big tax battles which is how to bring crypto under compliance with the current tax regime.

I still think they lack the technical knowledge to understand crypto and as a result, you'll start to see an increase in information being requested.

In any case, I willing to bet that you'll have a couple of court cases that will really bring crypto into compliance in a way that makes sense for 80% of the people.

Re: IRS sends warning letters to more than 10k cryptocurrency holders

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously no, the math doesn't prevent them from shooting your dog and carting you away to a jail cell but your assumptions about enforcement are naive. The typical MO for tax evasion is to just not report your side gig (crypto or otherwise), hope you don't get caught and play dumb and pay up if you do get caught. This doesn't change whether it's crypto or doing under the table work which is the point I'm trying to m…

Failing to report income is federal crime. It's not more complicated than that.

How does that change anything about what I said? The people intentionally not paying taxes know full well that it's a crime.

Re: IRS sends warning letters to more than 10k cryptocurrency holders

#43

I'm sure there's a lot to know about this topic, but it's odd to me that they'd treat a "currency" as an appreciating asset. If I'm given a dollar (or peso) as change, and if between the time I receive the dollar and the time I spend it the currency purchasing power increases, I do not pay taxes on that gain. I can just buy more stuff with that dollar (including other currencies). In this instance, where it's increas…

How practical is bitcoin as a currency for day to day use. I thought the transaction time was 10 to 30 minutes. I get frustrated at the checkout counter when my credit card takes longer than 10 seconds.

10 to 30 minutes seems a lot closer to how long it takes for a stock sale to go through on E-Trade so I can see why the IRS would classify it more like a stock than currency.

Re: IRS sends warning letters to more than 10k cryptocurrency holders

#44
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends where you do your transactions. If you do it on CoinBase, yes, you are going to be tracked. There are many other options though where you don't have to provide ID.

Just because you're not tracked doesn't mean it's not tax fraud.

I did not state that it was not tax fraud. I was just replying to the person above who states that the government will find you whatever you do. There are multiple ways so the government is not aware of what you are doing in cryptocurrency.

Re: IRS sends warning letters to more than 10k cryptocurrency holders

#45

This is no different from any other profit or gain. The Government isn't specifically targeting these people; it just wants them to make sure they realize it's like any other investment.

I hate that people treat currencies as an "investment". In my mind, crypto concurrency is the perfect value-store (like gold used to be), not an appreciating asset. Yet because people treat it like stocks, it behaves like stocks.

Re: IRS sends warning letters to more than 10k cryptocurrency holders

#46
So long as this is the case how can it possibly make sense to use bitcoin to actually transact e.g. fulfill the vision of bitcoin as "digital money" if every time you buy a cup of coffee with bitcoin the expectation is that you'd have to calculate capital gains and report every year?

Re: IRS sends warning letters to more than 10k cryptocurrency holders

#49
post #2

The math behind crypto doesn’t magically make you immune to government oversight. All they have to do is ask, and you better not lie.

> The math behind crypto doesn’t magically make you immune to government oversight.

Not legally, but the math always gives you a stronger presumption of innocence than you'd otherwise have.

The economics are the same as gold mining, where what gives gold value is the fact that the expected returns from mining it are always negative. With gold, the concept is basically just that different types of sand have different weights, so due to a quirk in physics if you shake up sand the the heavier types of grains go to the bottom of your bucket. The fact that you can't ever reverse entropy like this (predictably) profitably is what secures its value. Similarly, with crypto what secures its value is that electricity cost of mining always outweighs the expected value of the crypto mined.

Anyway because the expected returns are always negative, it's much harder than it would otherwise be to identify people who have actually beat the odds to make money. Maybe not with Bitcoin due to the design of the ledger, but certainly with other cryptocurrencies.

If you Google for people who have made the money money mining gold, there are literally zero results. Why? Because the expected negative value makes it exceedingly difficult for the IRS to convict folks who are cheating on their taxes.

Re: IRS sends warning letters to more than 10k cryptocurrency holders

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Failing to report income is federal crime. It's not more complicated than that.

How does that change anything about what I said? The people intentionally not paying taxes know full well that it's a crime.

The IRS doesn't need to show intent to show you failed to pay substantial taxes you owe.
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