U.S. Treasury seeks reporting of cryptocurrency transfers | Hacker News Reader

U.S. Treasury seeks reporting of cryptocurrency transfers

reuters.com

84 pointsawb31 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27223484

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27223604

In many of these discussions why do we always refer to government as an abstract "they", why is it never "we or us". I think we've lost a connection between services provided by government for the public good and the means to pay-in for those services. Historically you paid taxes in real value (grains or gold) in exchange for protection, enforcement of property rights, and public goods. We do the same today, but the current state of income taxation seems wildly disconnected from value provided by government. Personal opinion is that LVT, VAT, excise taxes, and taxation in equity is a better way to link equitable distribution of real value to benefits.

> In many of these discussions why do we always refer to government as an abstract "they", why is it never "we or us".

It's probably just because we're talking about the government and the public servants that run it, not society or the country as a whole - stating 'we' could be interpreted as the writer being a government employee themselves.

People have started realising they're paying a higher % in tax than billionaires and corporations with all their loop holes.

People have started realising that government is simply a form of organised oppression, aimed at keeping the working and middle class poor and letting the rich exploit them.

On the same theme, 1099 contractors beware.

IRS is planning big changes around 1099-K filings

Previously, payment settlers (PSEs) were required to report payments to IRS, only if they exceeded both $20,000 & 200 transactions in a given calendar year.

Starting 2022, those values will be reduced to $600, and 0, respectively.

In short, the IRS will know all your income.

States already adopting this: VT, MA, VA, MD

Edit: messed up vermont

If they drop the limit to $0 they will get a lot of noise from yard sale type activity and other things that are non-taxable in nature.

Well, for one, selling stuff at a yard sale isn’t non-taxable. But generally you don’t have to pay tax because you’re selling things for less than you bought them for (you have a personal loss that is non deductible). If you sell it for more than you paid, you have gain that is taxable (but often unreported). But in any event, 1099-K reporting is only from a payment processor - if you accept cash where there is no payment processor involved there wouldn’t be any reporting. But if you sell some stuff on eBay, you might get a 1099 from them or PayPal. Then, you will have to show the proceeds from the sales and your basis, or the IRS matching program may indicate that you have unreported income.

I thought those types of capital gains/loss calculations only applied to stocks, bonds, real estates, etc...

Does it actually apply to literally anything I sell?

I believe not all tangible property automatically counts. However anything that is deemed a "collectible" is subject to capital gains taxes. That includes artwork, stamps, jewelry, and generally anything similar held for the purpose of investment. Details: https://www.thetaxadviser.com/issues/2019/nov/taxation-colle...

The limit will be 600$ and >0 transactions a year (at least that’s what comment says.)

That's the current threshold for some other kinds of 1099 forms, e.g. 1099-MISC for freelance income.

Correct. But 1099 mis income requirements are largely not enforced because it would be expensive and unpopular if they focused on the lemonade stand of Ms Jane. So, there is a ton of noncompliance.

The IRS is going upstream on those transactions, by enforcing compliance at the pay processor level.

At that point,there is no mistake. You got a 1099k, and you chose to ignore it. The onus is no longer on the customer to send you a 1099. Its on the money processing service.

VE?

>"The IRS investment plan also would replace the Treasury's 1960s-era computer architecture with new machine-learning-capable systems that will be better able to detect suspect tax returns. IRS is the only federal agency with computers that run on the antiquated Common Business-Oriented Language (COBOL) system, Treasury said."

This is a dumb statement, they're referring to zSeries that derives from System 360. This architecture is has been running fine for decades. This isn't to say the zSeries isn't up-to-date, go check the latest HotChips conference to see what's coming down the pipe.

There's nothing wrong with COBOL either its been running for decades doing boring but essential things like payroll and taxes.

Sprinkle all the latest flavours of ML you want alongside it but this feels like a cheap shot. I expected better journalism from Reuters.

> There's nothing wrong with COBOL either its been running for decades doing boring but essential things like payroll and taxes.

IIRC, some extremely core IRS systems are actually written in IBM 360 Assembly. A few years back, there was a project to develop an automated translator to convert that code to Java, but the project failed. The lead engineer was hired on some special authorization to get around government salary limits, but that authorization couldn't be renewed before the project was done.

I don't remember the specifics, but I recall reading there's an actual IBM 7000 series mainframe still in government service. It has some kind of wrapper implemented to allow it to be called by more modern systems.

> I don't remember the specifics, but I recall reading there's an actual IBM 7000 series mainframe still in government service. It has some kind of wrapper implemented to allow it to be called by more modern systems.

My understanding is some US government agency still has some apps written in 7074 assembly language. But it doesn't have a physical 7074 series mainframe, it uses a 7074 emulator which runs under z/OS on modern System z hardware.

That 7074 emulator isn't some secret sauce, it is actually just a very old IBM product. When IBM released the S/360 in the 1960s, they also released a 7074 emulator to help customers port their apps from 7074 to S/360. And this US government agency used that emulator to port some of their 7074 apps to S/360, and are still running the emulator on modern z/OS. It is probably no longer officially supported by IBM, but due to z/OS's excellent backward compatibility it still runs.

(The idea that the US government still has a physical 7074, as opposed to just an emulator for it, is in part due to US government employees who have spoken about this topic publicly being deliberately vague due to "security reasons".)

>IIRC, some extremely core IRS systems are actually written in IBM 360 Assembly.

Yeah, this language is called PL/X and its specifically not for use outside the company. Its a language between Assembly and C and gives the programmer a huge amount of control over the hardware.

Going from PL/X to Java won't work as well as the JVM runtime has overheads that might not be acceptable for 31bit zSeries with its 2gb address space. Also compared to PL/X you're giving up a huge amount of control.

Are you confusing IBM and IRS here? PL/X is an internal language used by IBM. To the best of my knowledge, the IRS don't directly use it.

(There was a brief period, I think early 2000s, IBM let members of its partner program order IBM's PL/X compiler for a small fee. They withdrew that later but some ISVs did get their hands on it while that policy was in place. I think it is actually still sometimes available to ISVs if they pay $$$ and sign an NDA.)

I hate to say it, but buy Palantir stock, because the IRS isn't going to do this alone...

It's so much worse than zSeries + COBOL...

The core of those systems is IBM 7074 assembly (well, autocoder, as it was called back then). Wish I were kidding.

US government trying to claw back the money they printed. It’s too late, everyone who was holding assets will lord over the day job having hardworking Americans that weren’t so lucky.

Monetary stimulus -> crypto.

Thanks FED!

Violent revolution has historically been an option

I don't know if that's practical anymore.

The government is in a pretty strong position of leverage against US citizens. They don’t need any kind of crypto-breaking technology to control Bitcoin and they never will. They just ask you if you have it and if you sold it, and you tell the truth to them or perjure yourself and go to jail until you give up your super uncrackable TSM crypto wallet keys.

I wonder if any of this was prompted by Elon Musk like pump and dumps. Most pump and dumps in the past were twitter, telegram or IRC rallied pseudonyms. I think the using your billion dollar company to pump and dump is quite new. Although the last president liked to do that with pharma companies drugs during the last pandemic.

Surely they don't need mandatory reporting to rein in on corporations doing pump and dumps, when it's already plainly visible in the open?

Here's an idea just report your address on your tax return. Problem solved?

Filed with: Auditing poor people and other stuff the IRS prefers spending resources on.

ref: https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-now-audits-poor-ameri...

You've replied to this story about a doubling of IRS headcount with an article that complains about how the IRS is too starved of resources to go after the rich, and somehow come to the conclusion that it's more of the same.

You seem to be making some kind of observation but it is unclear what that is.

Precisely, what is your point here?

This article describes a mitigation to the problem in the article you have linked, and you have instead described it an aggravation of that problem.

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