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Reported Bitcoin 'founder' Craig Wright's home raided by Australian police

theguardian.com

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Re: Reported Bitcoin 'founder' Craig Wright's home raided by Australian police

#111

Post by rlpb »

peterburkimsher wrote: post #94

"I do not want to be your posterboy. I am not found and I do not want to be." Why oh why can't journalists just respect his wishes! "People love my secret identity and hate me." It certainly seems that the Australian police aren't on particularly good terms with him at the moment. If the Australian government takes control of the Tulip Trust bitcoin stash, the world has to deal with a cryptocurrency being managed by…

> Another hypothetical thought: when the original bitcoin creator mined thAnother hypothetical thought: when the original bitcoin creator mined the first bitcoins, they were worthless. They only gain value if someone else projects value onto them. They're not being used. Imagine they're a form of trading derivative (e.g. stock options): the right to trade in future. Are those taxed?

Generally yes, although I don't know about Australia. In the UK it's called capital gains tax.

Re: Reported Bitcoin 'founder' Craig Wright's home raided by Australian police

#112

Post by NeutronBoy »

Angostura wrote: post #107
aianus wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to pay taxes on capital gains until you sell the asset. Satoshi hasn't sold his hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin, they're just sitting there on the blockchain where they were mined.

Unless Australian tax law considers Bitcoin a currency.

It doesn't

Re: Reported Bitcoin 'founder' Craig Wright's home raided by Australian police

#113

Post by Innercode »

mianos wrote: post #100
mikeyouse wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, we had Deloitte AU helping with ours.

Both crazy not to try and do it in house for the cost. Those guys are charging 15% and say you won't get it if you do it yourself. Any confident business person should be able to. It is meant to be self administered. It is a huge profit center for the likes of KPMG.

The R&D Tax scheme is a mix of law, tax and accounting. Like representing yourself in a legal matter or doing your own tax return, if its simple and straightforward you might be ok to claim yourself.

However add a little complexity here or there and it helps to have someone who knows what they're doing to guide you through it. Its a self assessment scheme, like tax, anyone can lodge their own return and the ATO will pay out with only cursory checks.

The real danger lies when you get audited, it can be especially dangerous for startups who have been claiming a few years, ignorant that they have not been claiming properly and are faced with an Audit by the ATO for multiple years of tax refunds. Generally once you add penalties to the tax refunds they must now pay back, the amount will end most startups.

There are many reputable consultants in this space who are capable and cheaper than the big 4. I would suggest sticking to the big 4, Tier 2 Accounting firms and Boutique R&D Tax Firms. They should be registered tax agents and generally you would want to know if they have successfully navigated Ausindustry Reviews and ATO audits before. Avoid suburban accountants like the plague for these things.

Re: Reported Bitcoin 'founder' Craig Wright's home raided by Australian police

#114

Post by [deleted] »

thebooktocome wrote: post #52
nullc wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gwern has a long history of obsessive and misdirected behavior on this subject which is likely to cause harm to others. This particular case is Gwern's N-th accused "satoshi"... and this time the evidence consists mostly of counter evidence. For example, these pgp signed emails are signed with the key with short ID 5EB7CB21 which is not the well known key, does not exist in old keyserver dumps, and has a pref-hash-al…

> This particular case is Gwern's N-th accused "satoshi" Not with this degree of certainty.

[deleted]

Re: Reported Bitcoin 'founder' Craig Wright's home raided by Australian police

#115

Post by gordjw »

rlpb wrote: post #111
peterburkimsher wrote: post #94

"I do not want to be your posterboy. I am not found and I do not want to be." Why oh why can't journalists just respect his wishes! "People love my secret identity and hate me." It certainly seems that the Australian police aren't on particularly good terms with him at the moment. If the Australian government takes control of the Tulip Trust bitcoin stash, the world has to deal with a cryptocurrency being managed by…

> Another hypothetical thought: when the original bitcoin creator mined thAnother hypothetical thought: when the original bitcoin creator mined the first bitcoins, they were worthless. They only gain value if someone else projects value onto them. They're not being used. Imagine they're a form of trading derivative (e.g. stock options): the right to trade in future. Are those taxed? Generally yes, although I don't kn…

AFAIK, the tax is only applied when the value is realised (i.e. sold/liquidated).

I wouldn't have thought just holding bitcoins would be grounds for taxation.

Re: Reported Bitcoin 'founder' Craig Wright's home raided by Australian police

#116

Post by gordjw »

ps4fanboy wrote: post #101
robzyb wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fellow Australian here (albeit currently living in Tokyo). The "We create tax refunds" part of your homepage says that a company can get a tax refund even if there is no sales. Does this mean that if I establish a company tomorrow, invest $100k of capital, and spent $100k of capital on R&D, then the ATO will give my company $45k?

Yes, you have to spend the money though so youll still be down 55K, it doesnt count to things like capital purchases.

Depends who owns the company you spend the $100k with.

They'd need to pay 30% tax on their income, leaving a net outlay by the government of $15k (15%) overall.

Re: Reported Bitcoin 'founder' Craig Wright's home raided by Australian police

#117

Post by ebbv »

peterburkimsher wrote: post #94

"I do not want to be your posterboy. I am not found and I do not want to be." Why oh why can't journalists just respect his wishes! "People love my secret identity and hate me." It certainly seems that the Australian police aren't on particularly good terms with him at the moment. If the Australian government takes control of the Tulip Trust bitcoin stash, the world has to deal with a cryptocurrency being managed by…

> Why oh why can't journalists just respect his wishes!

Because it's their job not to. Lots of people don't want to be found but it's in the public interest to find them.

I'd argue the same goes for the creator of Bitcoin. It's in the public interest to find this person and see what they stand to gain from Bitcoin's continued use and value, and what they are likely to do with the money. You will respond that it doesn't matter, but it does.

What if Bitcoin came from Iran's secret service and it will be used to fund an enrichment facility?

What if it came from a drug lord?

What if it came from Michael Bay and he's going to make yet another Transformers movie with it?

All of these are in the public interest to find out and make people reconsider their adoption of it.

A decision void of context is necessarily an ignorant decision.

Re: Reported Bitcoin 'founder' Craig Wright's home raided by Australian police

#118

Post by dogma1138 »

gordjw wrote: post #115
rlpb wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another hypothetical thought: when the original bitcoin creator mined thAnother hypothetical thought: when the original bitcoin creator mined the first bitcoins, they were worthless. They only gain value if someone else projects value onto them. They're not being used. Imagine they're a form of trading derivative (e.g. stock options): the right to trade in future. Are those taxed? Generally yes, although I don't kn…

AFAIK, the tax is only applied when the value is realised (i.e. sold/liquidated). I wouldn't have thought just holding bitcoins would be grounds for taxation.

Capital gains taxes are way more complicated than this and they aren't only calculated when the asset is disposed off. Capital gains also are not calculated for individual assets but globally which also means you get tax relief for capital loss if any had occurred.

If you have any capital assets each year their value will be recalculated and compared to last's year calculations (some assets maybe calculated on a quarterly basis) the taxable value is then adjusted for any capital gains or loss that was carried from previous years and the final amount is calculated so you get a tax invoice "your GC tax for year 2015-2016 is X).

You can pay that tax immediately or you can choose to carry it on depending on the tax law and assets you might have to pay a certain amount immediately you might also be allowed to carry the tax to the next year which also might incur a certain payment/tax on it's own.

If the tax law allows you to carry on loss or gains to following years there's usually a limit to this (e.g. you have to pay the tax every 5 or 7 years to be able to do that) different types of assets will also have different regulation regarding deferring tax payments e.g. directly tradable/liquid assets like bonds might now grant you deferral on yearly GC tax while non-liquid assets like property which requires registration and tax duty to transfer will.

Considering that Australia most likely has laws which will be quite similar to those of the UK (As it only achieved final independence in 1942 or well technically 1986 ;)) there is a good chance that the capital gains tax on BC should've been paid every year, and even if it wasn't and you could deffer payments you had to declare it and submit it for valuation each year for tax purposes because otherwise GC tax cannot be calculated. So no matter what was the value of BC when he made it if he didn't declare it properly especially after it was defined as taxable assets in Australia he violated the law, given his at least presumed intelligence (regardless if he's Satoshi or not) and the actions he so far has taken this was done quite knowingly and intentionally.

Re: Reported Bitcoin 'founder' Craig Wright's home raided by Australian police

#119

Post by wizeman »

ebbv wrote: post #117
peterburkimsher wrote: post #94

"I do not want to be your posterboy. I am not found and I do not want to be." Why oh why can't journalists just respect his wishes! "People love my secret identity and hate me." It certainly seems that the Australian police aren't on particularly good terms with him at the moment. If the Australian government takes control of the Tulip Trust bitcoin stash, the world has to deal with a cryptocurrency being managed by…

> Why oh why can't journalists just respect his wishes! Because it's their job not to. Lots of people don't want to be found but it's in the public interest to find them. I'd argue the same goes for the creator of Bitcoin. It's in the public interest to find this person and see what they stand to gain from Bitcoin's continued use and value, and what they are likely to do with the money. You will respond that it doesn…

What if knives had been invented by a drug lord?

Who cares? What's important is whether knives are useful to us or not. If the inventor is a drug lord, then the problem is that he is a drug lord, not that he invented knives.

If someone invents something useful, then he should be rewarded, independently of whether he then uses the resulting money to save starving children or to buy Doritos all to himself.

If he does something illegal with that money, then we should come after him because he did something illegal, not because he was able to do something illegal (because he had earned a lot of money).

Re: Reported Bitcoin 'founder' Craig Wright's home raided by Australian police

#120

Post by nickonline »

imron wrote: post #85
AKifer wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that this [very] clever person would put his bitcoins at risk of a seizure at his/her home

True, however I don't doubt that there are [very] stupid people who think it would be a good idea to break in to his house to steal hard-drives/computers in case they have bitcoins on them. And it looks like the ATO doesn't doubt that either and wants to protect evidence from its ongoing investigation.

The guy that put together silk road was found with all his stuff at the same coffee shop every day.
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