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Comment by shareme | Hacker News Reader

hmm so how will they outlaw bartering?

But than again the derivative traders, they are allowed to make free money and steal without any change..

Actually, bartering is already covered in the US tax code. You're supposed to claim the fair market value of the goods/ services you received as income.

http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420.html

Sorry shareme, but this is pretty much a perfect example of a bad HN comment.

hmm so how will they outlaw bartering?

Unjustified logical leap.

But than again the derivative traders

Misspelling.

they are allowed to make free money and steal

Nonsensical accusation against a group of people engaged in an activity which I'm not sure you fully understand.

without any change..

Incomprehensible.

Please think before you type.

>which I'm not sure you fully understand.

Ah, condescension, now that is a perfect example of a typical HN comment.

Is he wrong? How is he wrong?

I don't think bxr is saying that hugh3 is wrong. He's saying that he is being condescending (although I'm not so sure this is typical). I guess hugh3 could have just said "Nonsensical accusation" and his point that it was "pretty much a perfect example of a bad HN comment" might have been even stronger without speculation on shareme's level of understanding of derivative trading.

Sure, but 'hugh3 didn't write that comment to be mean. He's making an example out of something that really is an example of one of the archetypical thread-disrupting issue-forking politics-inducing conspiracy-theoretic superficial toxic comments. That's what I see there. You can obviously disagree.

I actually think we are in agreement.

Ah, the snide counter to condescension, &etc.

Let me add some nitpicking to complete the obnoxious HN trifecta. The proper ortographic representation of etc is &c. In fact, that's where the ampersand comes from (think ligature form of Et).

I appreciated this, actually. It's funny how just being in a negative tree gets you downvoted by association--good thing it's just karma, eh?

To be fair, it's less that we're in a negative tree and more that we're not adding value to the discussion.

Yeah, but I didn't expect people to take it so _personally._

(Or maybe I do, but I unconsciously resent how serious we are and fight it by taking a few downvotes every so often.)

As far as I can tell, the suggestion that they might as well soon go about outlawing bartering is a sound one. Neither bartering nor bitcoins use US minted currency, both cannot be traced unless the participants volunteer that information, and both arguably can be used for "tax evasion". I'm not trained in tax law, but it wouldn't really surprise me if legally citizens were mandated to report barters on their taxes.

Furthermore, both can be used to acquire drugs. Of course, bartering is at this point far more popular for that...

"Misspelling."

Seriously dude? This isn't slashdot.

both arguably can be used for "tax evasion"

You can use US minted currency for tax evasion as well.

Exactly.

And that's illegal as well.

So? It doesn't stop it from being done. Legality != prevention/deterrance.

The IRS, unsurprisingly, is way ahead of you on this one

http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420.html

and in fact you are obliged to report bartering income on your US taxes. Bartering, of course, remains perfectly legal, as long as you report it on your taxes.

Of course the IRS doesn't bother to enforce this on small-scale bartering. But if you set up a large-scale bartering network then they would. If you went one step further and threw in an intermediary system of "credits" so that transactions could take place indirectly (instead of swapping pigs for goats you swap pigs for credits and credits for goats) then they'd consider that as minting currency and take a rather dim view.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPypDaXfIV8&t=01m18s

You used to be able to use casino chips in Vegas just like cash. You could pay for your meal with chips in a place totally unrelated to gambling. You could pay for your taxi ride in casino chips. Casinos would accept chips from other casinos without any problem.

Then the treasury dept. stepped in and forced them to stop. All that's in the past now.

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