Yes, I’m insanely late getting our taxes done, especially since we’re due a large refund. In my defense, we have some unusual tax situations and I just couldn’t force myself to deal with the number crunching.
Anyway - at one point, it asked whether we’d acquired, traded or sold any cryptocurrency last year. I said yes - as I had a mining program on a little-used desktop computer.
And it didn’t ask ANYTHING ELSE on the topic. Not “how much did you get, how much did you sell”. Nothing.
Is this just to set a flag in the IRS’s systems to be on the lookout for shenanigans? I’m not sure how much mischief I can get up to with my 36 dollars worth of Bitcoin, but I’m sure that’s just lack of imagination on my part.
God what a terrible article. Or at least, they interviewed some people who gave very misleading answers.
“Say you paid $10 for virtual currency, but then bought coffee for $8,” said Walker. “You have a $2 loss you need to report.”
No. If you paid $10 for 1 InterBuck*, and then used that InterBuck to pay for an $8 coffee, you’d have a $2 loss to report. But if you paid $10 for 1 InterBuck and used 0.8 InterBucks for an $8 coffee, you wouldn’t have a loss to report. (Also, if you pay $10 for 1 InterBuck, and then just buy your $8 with cash, you don’t have a loss - but the syntax of that statement includes that transaction as well. Just terrible!)
Yeah - after I posted the question I did some googling. One article suggested that this lets the IRS prove intentional deception if you don’t report the gain or loss in the future.
Of course it’s hard to prove the cost if, say, you gained it via mining. I’m going with the assumption that I probably spent most of the value on the electricity I spent keeping the computer running :).