[kingu]

And now the message to all businesses in Germany: If you accept Bitcoin, you’re going to have to charge VAT. Which will have to be collected at the same time in cash, and pretty much eliminate the currency as a medium of exchange. I suppose some businesses could attempt to pay those taxes themselves, but that won’t last very long.

And good luck filing your taxes for mined bitcoins; what value you apply to the mined currency will certainly be well out of date by the time your taxes are processed.

[Myrddin]

The capital gains angle will kill it. How do you establish a basis price? If you remit payment as a bitcoin and the value skyrockets during the interval between submission and acceptance, who gets hit for the appreciation? You may have to lock down the value to the nearest point in time...perhaps milliseconds on a day with much churn in value. Against which currency will the appreciation be evaluated? Euros, USD and yuan move differently.