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IRS: Bitcoin Is Property, Not Currency
An anonymous reader sends this news from Bloomberg:
"The U.S. government will treat Bitcoin as property for tax purposes, applying rules it uses to govern stocks and barter transactions, the Internal Revenue Service said in its first substantive ruling on the issue. Today's IRS guidance will provide certainty for investors, along with potential income-tax liability. Under the ruling, purchasing a $2 cup of coffee with Bitcoins bought for $1 would trigger $1 in capital gains for the coffee drinker and $2 of income for the coffee shop. ... Under the IRS ruling, Bitcoin investors would be treated like stock investors. Bitcoins held for more than a year and then sold would pay the lower tax rates applicable to capital gains — a maximum of 23.8 percent compared with the 43.4 percent top rate on property sold within a year of purchase. For investors with losses, U.S. tax law allows taxpayers to subtract capital losses from any capital gains. They can also subtract up to $3,000 of capital losses a year from ordinary income.'"
...as you can offset a drop in the value of your bitcoins as a tax deduction.
Selling human beings, especially heroines is illegal and generally Frowned Upon. Sort of like selling heroin except worse.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
What makes you think no tax applies to a barter transaction?
I would think this is really bad news in disguise for bitcoin, because it discourages the use of bitcoin for commerce both because of the tax issue and because of the reporting requirements. (Who wants to deal with computing a wash sale just to buy a cup of coffee?) If people are inspired to sit on bitcoin until they cross the 1-year capital gains threshold, that behavior change could move bitcoin one step away from use as a currency, and put it in the same illiquid category as gold or bearer bonds.
The ruling is more about what forms you need to fill out when your report your taxes. There are separate formulas for currency than for property. Bitcoins don't have some of the complexity that foriegn currencies do.(exchange rates, trade agreements) So the property forms are less work for the IRS.
Did they just write "Bitcoin" in the new law or something more general that can include anything? Otherwise, Bitcoin is now regulated but LiteCoin, DogeCoin and all the other coins are not.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Not so fast. The IRS does tax barter transactions.
http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/t...
Yep, you don't have to pay capital gains on the appreciation of your property. Not the same thing as property tax. Property tax is dealing with the property's "current value". Since you are still holding the property, no capital gains (or losses) have occurred (yet).
First off if you're in a state that actually spends only 8% of it's SDP you're in a minority. Most states are in 9% or 10% range. More people live in one state that's above 11% (Cali) then all sub-9% states combined.
The Feds support a lot of state-level spending through indirect programs. Student aid like Pell Grants, Race to the Top money, and support for police allows a lot of libraries to be built.
The NSA, billion-dollar-bombers, and campaign contributors only actually add up to a small fraction of the Federal budget. A huge chunk is transfer payments set up before most campaign contributors were born. Medicare and Social Security alone are a majority of Federal spending in the 2010-2019 period. Medicaid is another fairly large chunk, this year ObamaCare subsidies kick in, with Pell grants, Earned Income Credit, military retirements, the VA, etc. I'd estimate 2/3-3/4 of Federal spending is simply the Feds shuffling money from the accounts of some Americans into the accounts of American who American voters have decided deserve the money more.
The "Billion-dollar-bombers" could be gotten rid of easily in theory. In practice those pesky American voters tend to look on defense cuts as encouraging Putin to be Hitler Mk. II, so it's unlikely they'll be cut. Whatever it's other crimes, the NSA budget is a rounding error (literally: $11 Billion is under 1/3 of a percent of the total) on the Federal total. "Handouts" to campaign contributors tend to be exaggerated. There's generally no quid-pro-quo. What happens is the company that would be a shoe-in if the government decided to study the effect of dung beetle blood on the flu virus finds a candidate who supports studying dung beetle blood and sends him a check. If Congressional votes could actually be easily bought then we wouldn't have a DRIC project, we'd have a second span to the Ambassador Bridge.
Which means that when Federal spending cuts get talked about proposals tend to be both ambitious and vague (ie: every Paul Ryan "budget" ever) or specific and miniscule (like your proposal, which the NSA's 0.31% off Federal spending). The specific/miniscule cuts that could actually get passed would almost certainly include most support for states and cities because Congress doesn't get yelled at when Jindal has to expel scholarship students from Louisiana State.