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Comment by burgerbrain | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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