Crypto is also used to evade taxes. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but it's not as bad as dealing drugs or scamming people.
You know what, this narrative is funny, because 99.999% of the time in which "crypto" is used to evade taxes, it's the kind of taxes that would need to be paid because of capital gains on the crypto assets because their value increased. But most of the time, they are unrealized gains, which means that tax evasion didn't actually happen. But anyway, let's now think of the cases where the person sold the crypto back to fiat: how easy is to evade taxes at that moment? Not very, because most exchanges report trades to authorities.
And anyway, the fact that their crypto balance increased is due ultimately to politicians doing QE! So they tax us in a hidden-way via money-printing, and after the scarce assets increase in value because of this, they want to tax us again.
But I suppose some crypto owners are changing their tax residence without declaring their crypto i.e. no deemed disposal and exit tax.
Want to buy a house? Now you need to convert your crypto into fiat and a deed transfer. People will start asking where your funds are coming from. This is where you tend to get caught.
This is a weird statement.
If it's a cash offer, it's a seller's job to determine if you have the money, not if you paid taxes on it.
If it's a mortgage down payment, then the bank is more interested in if your assets are going to disappear (e.g. are they actually a loan from a third party?). I've never had a mortgage bank inquire about my tax situation.
If you're talking about IRS audits... then yes, they might be curious how you purchased a giant asset without any declared income. But that's similar to any unreported income situation.
>This is a weird statement.
Not in the UK. Here there's a legal obligation on the conveyancing practitioner - which you have to use - to confirm the source of funds for the purchase. They "will ask questions about your salary, request bank statements and ask you to give details of any family inheritances"[1].
[1] https://www.bannerjones.co.uk/your-property/services/buying/...
Or has it always been a thing?
Yes, but your bank and the bank of the seller both have strict KYC/AML rules to respect. And the seller probably doesn't want to accept a pile of bills that requires laundering.
Honestly, to op's point, the IRS audit would be the likeliest to nail you, post-purchase.
"Person without demonstrated income suddenly buys expensive asset" is hard to hide and a huge, trackable signal.
Governments can get most of their revenue with little economic distortion by taxing stuff where evasion is much harder: Fuel taxes and property taxes.
You may believe there's a better way for the government to tax us, but that's not how the system works currently.
Crypto being used for tax evasion is a good reason for it to be regulated out of existence.
Regulating it with a heavy hand will do more harm than good. Those innovators will just move offshore.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_money
But a system that takes the concept of ledgers, and makes it tied to pseudonymous addresses instead of persons, is distributed across the world, resilient to tampering, and which gives its users control over their money, and which has been in use for 15 years is
1. “Not innovative”, and
2. That in the span of 30,000 years that 15 years is enough time to really tell if this is something that will survive or if it’s just a dumb idea that will die out.
I think that Bitcoin is a wonderful system, and I think that more people should take time to study Bitcoin in detail. Do not let the crypto bros and the people that only care about measuring Bitcoin in dollars distract you from the real point of Bitcoin.
Well, it is innovative, in the same sense a jet engine is. What you don't do with jet engines is using them to keep static structures in the air indefinitely. You use steel beams or concrete for that.
Crypto tech as cash alternative is pretty much jet engine as a steel tower alternative.
I don't personally own any beer hats. But I see how they are useful at a baseball game for example.
Thanks for reminding me that beer hats exist. Now, if only I can find a store that sells beerhats for BTC :thinking_face:
Yes, let them move offshore. Being able to more easily commit tax fraud and money laundering isn't the kind of innovation we need to keep.
I also think that businesses avoiding tax by not reporting cash are putting themselves into an unfair position against businesses that are legally operating, and I'd have a preference that businesses doing this should be shut down. If you're running a thin margin business and your competitor is able to price themselves better by committing tax fraud, then you need to also commit tax fraud to compete, and that's a race to the bottom that's not good for anyone.
You can also compare apples and oranges, but the comparison might not be useful.
If you are Donald Trump or Nancy Pelosi, other rules apply to you, because they are the ones who write the rules or lobby for them.
Usually in this context the "evaders" will refer to it as tax resistance or tax protest. It is a form of civil disobedience. The government being disobeyed, of course, is unlikely to see it that way, and in a modern context, would call it evasion. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_resistance
The Indian example is especially poignant because refusing to pay salt taxes was one of their key strategies for achieving independence from the British, and they managed to do it without firing a shot. So yeah I'd say refusing to pay the salt tax was a big win morally and probably saved a lot of lives.
What the best examples typically have in common is that the government in question didn't possess the consent of the governed. In the case of the British WTRL the refrain was "No vote, no tax." If the government won't let women vote then what right does it have to tax them? Women weren't able to indicate consent (or lack thereof) via the political process, and they were ultimately successful in their argument that this taxation without representation was unjust. Incidentally this line of thinking was expanded upon decades later across the pond in the US, which ultimately decided via the 26th amendment that it was immoral to draft men into the army when they were still too young to vote, and lowered the voting age to 18.
See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_acts_of_tax... for hundreds of examples you might or might not agree with ...!
Your argument doesn't make sense. The example you cite are examples of protest against unjust taxation not that "the government is not entitled" to any of my crypto. As you yourself elaborate in the following paragraphs. Are you seriously suggesting parallels between the crypto bros and Gandhi in that they are both participating in civil disobedience? Oh. Please.
And SBF is just a modern day MLK because both are referred to by TLAs!
This doesn't seem to want crypto or finance exchanges. Thistle people just want the benefits of the government without paying for it.
That's just fraud.
I never met his dealer, but I'm sure the dealer saw the decay and did nothing.
Dealers have no morals. Even the law that bartenders aren't allowed to serve drunk people is an absolute farce. Walk into any bar in this country and you'll find drunk people being served alcohol.
Maybe there is more to it than whether something is legal or illegal.
Regular tax paying people who want to alter their mind; ok.
But also customers who break the law in order to pay for drugs.
And when and where is it okay to deal? Personally I would not want drug addicts frequenting any place where I am trying to live.
Then what about the product they sell: supplied by violent cartels? No thanks.
Designer drugs laced with who knows what manufactured in an overseas lab? Again no.