In the U.S. tax season has arrived and many American cryptocurrency proponents are squirming because they have to pay for some of the gains they made last year. However, there are a lot of digital currency holders who could care less about taxes and they strongly believe that taxation is antithetical to cryptocurrencies. While there is a good portion of digital currency holders planning to file their gains and losses, many crypto-advocates don’t plan to pay their tax liabilities.
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Cryptocurrency Taxes: Not Many People Pay Them
If you’re a cryptocurrency enthusiast then over the past few weeks you’ve probably seen a lot of articles on paying cryptocurrency taxes, how to pay them, and the horror stories involved with those who have to pay taxes on every transaction because — every single one is a taxable event in the U.S. Even though lots of people believe the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) classification is unjust by defining cryptocurrencies as a property rather than a currency, people still are forced to pay for their cryptocurrency gains. Just recently there’s been a multitude of reports on cryptocurrency taxation, and some of them explain that a lot of cryptocurrency proponents don’t seem to care about paying their digital asset taxes.
Jagjit Chawla, the general manager of Credit Karma Tax explained this week that out of 250,000 individuals who claim to hold cryptocurrencies like bitcoin less than 100 people (0.0004%) reported their gains to the IRS.
“There’s a good chance that the perceived complexities of reporting cryptocurrency gains are pushing filers to wait until the very last minute,” explained Chawla.
Further a recent Pollfish conducted Lendedu survey of 1,000 U.S. residents who own cryptocurrencies revealed that 35.87 percent of respondents answered, “No, I do not plan on reporting gains or losses on my tax return” The news also follows the recent IRS Coinbase investigation that reported on how there are millions of Coinbase customers, but less than 900 individuals per year reported their taxes over the past few years.
Salty Tax Paying Bitcoiners Get Mad at ‘Tax Cheats’
The articles reporting on people not paying their cryptocurrency tax obligations has got a bunch of bitcoin users ‘salty’ this past week. One individual on the Reddit forum /r/bitcoin says that “tax cheats” are smearing the good name of bitcoin owners.
“This is just another way to try and defeat Bitcoin. Nobody likes a tax cheat. Convince the country that BTC holders don’t pay their taxes, and before you know it, you have large numbers of people against them,” explains the post on April 16 the day before tax obligations are due in the U.S.
I personally pay my taxes on BTC. It’s not an anonymous currency, and one day, (the IRS can look back seven years) you may get caught. If regulation forces exchanges to hand over all of their customer data, everyone who didn’t pay will be in for a wild ride.
‘Without Projects That Express Principles, You Have Nothing of What You Want With a Revolution’
However, the individual who wrote that post didn’t get the support he was looking for as many of the comments declared that “taxation is theft.” One person who specifically disliked the phrase ‘tax cheats’ in the post writes:
Even the term ‘tax cheating’ is a fallacy itself, implying people voluntarily agreed being taxed and are backing out of their agreement or smt. If I live in a county where politicians can raise taxes without consulting the parliament or making a referendum who is cheating who? Because I FEEL it’s us the people who are being cheated into paying more taxes.
Another person details their issue with the post, “The financial system now is the problem — My government is a warmongering fascist state — F#&$ paying taxes in this shit hole!
It’s safe to say that cryptocurrencies and taxes are very topical conversations, and the subjects often gets people upset. A large majority of the comments on the ‘tax cheat’ post disagreed with the person who wrote his opinion that tax cheats smeared the reputation of tax-paying citizens. There are a lot of cryptocurrency proponents who are also adamantly against paying taxes, and many of them are vocal about spreading the message that ‘taxation is theft’ over the years.
“Without a big expression of intentionality to what is considered not the ‘polite things to do with bitcoin’ — specifically money laundering, specifically private access to your coin, holding your own keys — without projects that express these principles, you have nothing of what you want with a revolution — This leaves me to proclaim that most people involved with bitcoin were not serious about that in the first place,” Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson explains in a 2015 interview.
What do you think about cryptocurrencies and taxes? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments below.
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