Feds will use sting operations and put people in prison.
Posted on 05/08/2021 2:23:09 AM PDT by ransomnote
A federal court in the Northern District of California entered an order today authorizing the IRS to serve a John Doe summons on Payward Ventures Inc., and Subsidiaries d/b/a Kraken (Kraken) seeking information about U.S. taxpayers who conducted at least the equivalent of $20,000 in transactions in cryptocurrency during the years 2016 to 2020. The IRS is seeking the records of Americans who engaged in business with or through Kraken, a digital currency exchanger headquartered in San Francisco, California.
“Gathering the information in the summons approved today is an important step to ensure cryptocurrency owners are following the tax laws,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General David A. Hubbert of the Justice Department’s Tax Division. “Those who transact with cryptocurrency must meet their tax obligations like any other taxpayer.”
“There is no excuse for taxpayers continuing to fail to report the income earned and taxes due from virtual currency transactions,” said IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig. “This John Doe summons is part of our effort to uncover those who are trying to skirt reporting and avoid paying their fair share.”
Cryptocurrency, as generally defined, is a digital representation of value. Because transactions in cryptocurrencies can be difficult to trace and have an inherently pseudoanonymous aspect, taxpayers may be using them to hide taxable income from the IRS. On April 1, 2021, a federal court in the District of Massachusetts granted an order authorizing the IRS to serve a similar John Doe summons on Circle, a digital currency exchange headquartered in Boston.
Today’s order from the Northern District of California grants the IRS permission to serve what is known as a “John Doe” summons on Kraken. The United States’ petition does not allege that Kraken has engaged in any wrongdoing in connection with its digital currency exchange business. Rather, according to the court’s order, the summons seeks information related to the IRS’s “investigation of an ascertainable group or class of persons” that the IRS has reasonable basis to believe “may have failed to comply with internal revenue laws.” According to the copy of the summons filed with the petition, the IRS directed Kraken to produce records identifying the U.S. taxpayers described above, along with other documents relating to their cryptocurrency transactions.
The IRS has issued guidance regarding the tax consequences on the use of virtual currencies in IRS Notice 2014-21,which provides that virtual currencies that can be converted into traditional currency are property for tax purposes, and a taxpayer can have a gain or loss on the sale or exchange of a virtual currency, depending on the taxpayer’s cost to purchase the virtual currency (that is, the taxpayer’s tax basis).
Feds will use sting operations and put people in prison.
See 21.
Here’s something Biden has done to damage the US taxpayer that is not in the news at all. Because, it was done by Janet Yellen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxDCABZvdw0
Which is why certain politicians seem more illegal laws against the American people. To further subjugate and eventually enslave them.
No.
bmp
most online games have a gold to USD exchange rate
maybe we should start reporting how much we make playing various online games
it’s about as valid as reporting digital currency
Understood. But it shouldn’t be that way. That’s just the communists’ clever way to abrogate Americans’ constitutionally- recognized rights. It is your right to keep your information private and especially out of government’s hands that our republic’s founders recognized, thought very important, and sought to protect.
“won’t people just go to foreign based exchanges which might not share their data with the IRS?”
The average person will get caught. However, organizations like, say, the Mafia, will have a sophisticated system to get around any surveillance. Or, the Mafia may actually own the company doing the transactions, thus erasing their own as they go. Another possibility is an organization can own, say, a credit card company or bank so that the transacted amount shows up as a credit in their account and is therefore automatically converted into dollars when the money is transferred into another account. The IRS really only goes after the little guys because it’s the little guys they can catch. (The Nazis bribed comparatively low level employees in Swiss banks to find and empty Jewish owned bank accounts. Low level employees can do amazing things because it is always assumed by those above that said employees are following the rules. And, low level employees are comparatively cheap to acquire.)
That old thing? That went out with “voting rights”.
That old thing? That went out with “voting rights”.
Your Honor:
Here is our hard drive. We have been told that the information that the plaintiff seeks is computationally unobtainable because of encryption.
Great news!
They added another bar to our prison cell!
The beginning of the end.
If the “gold” in those online games can be converted to real USD, you can be sure the IRS would be interested in any income or capital gains that may be derived from the transactions.
I agree. But when you turn that information over to a third party you are surrendering your privacy by definition -- at least under the U.S. Constitution. Federal privacy laws may protect the information to some degree (like medical records), but that's a statutory protection, not a constitutional one.
Interestingly, it was none other than Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas who weighed in on this very point and voted with the court's liberals in upholding the authority of the government to access certain mobile phone records in a criminal case. The basis of his opinion was that those records belong to the phone company, not the owner of the phone -- and he cited the mobile phone contract where it EXPLICITLY stated that the ownership of the records is assigned to the phone company.
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
John Doe is not a person, and they know it. This subpoena is blatantly unconstitutional.
What is the oath? “give me all the records, because I am guessing that someone cheated on their taxes.”
Please cite the case
The problem arises when you need to convert the asset into U.S. dollars to make it useful for you here in the U.S. If you bought $5,000 worth of Bitcoin and it’s now worth $1 million, there are no tax implications as long as you just hold onto it. But as soon as you convert the Bitcoin back to U.S. dollars it’s going to show up as a transaction the IRS can trace.
Where it really gets messy is some people have simply purchased goods rather than simply converting crypto to US dollars. Particularly purchases made overseas.
I missed out on "investing" in cryptocurrencies. If I had, I'd be getting out due expecting at some point more governments will ban their use. Though, it's possible they have become to big to fail so to speak.
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