{"id":2199,"date":"2017-03-27T16:56:20","date_gmt":"2017-03-27T14:56:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ofcourseimright.com\/?p=2199"},"modified":"2017-03-27T16:56:20","modified_gmt":"2017-03-27T14:56:20","slug":"taxing-bitcoin-irs-gets-involved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/?p=2199","title":{"rendered":"Taxing Bitcoin? IRS gets involved"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Wall Street Journal is reporting<\/a> that a large Bitcoin exchange Coinbase has been served with a so-called \u201cJohn Doe\u201d warrant in search of those people attempting to evade taxes.\u00a0 A number of privacy advocates are upset at the breadth of the warrant, because it demands access for an entire broad class of people, and not specific people.<\/p>\n

Bitcoin is used for all sorts of nefarious purposes, including online ransoming.\u00a0 Tax evasion would be the least of its problems.\u00a0 Were Coinbase a bank, they would be required to inform the federal government of transactions greater than $10,000 or of those individuals believed to be structuring transactions to avoid the $10,000 filing requirement.\u00a0 These are anti-money laundering provisions that go hand in hand with tax enforcement.<\/p>\n

And so my question: if it is wrong for the federal government to make such a demand of Coinbase, is it also wrong of them to make the same demand of banks?\u00a0 If it is not, then why should Coinbase be treated differently?\u00a0 And if Coinbase is not treated as a bank, is Bitcoin then not a currency?\u00a0 If it\u2019s not a currency, should it be treated as a capital asset for taxing purposes?\u00a0 If that is the case, how would the IRS be able to enforce the reporting requirements associated with assets?<\/p>\n

The alternative seems to be to trust people to not launder through Bitcoin.\u00a0 If history, including recent history, is any measure, that\u2019s a bad idea.\u00a0 Either way, Bitcoin has already shown that privacy has its downsides.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once again: is bitcoin a currency, and do currency rules apply? Or is it a capital asset and do those rules apply?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":172,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,17],"tags":[484,37,119],"class_list":["post-2199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-complexity","category-economics","tag-bitcoin","tag-privacy","tag-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/172"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2199"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2202,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2199\/revisions\/2202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}