July 20, 2017 - Judge Blasts IRS Over Bitcoin Probe, Lets Coinbase Customer Fight Summons
In her ruling, U.S. Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Corley strongly agreed, and declared the scope of the IRS request is unprecedented.
July 19, 2017 -- IRS narrows down Coinbase summons to transactions over $2,000
A court filing, titled “Notice of Narrowed Request for Enforcement,” hashed out the new scope of IRS’s request for the Coinbase accounts, stating: “the United States seeks information for users with at least the equivalent of $20,000 in any one transaction type (buy, sell, send, or receive) in any one year during the 2013-15 period.”
July 19, 2017 - Ethereum Millionaires Might Be Attracting Attention From Regulators
“I get many private messages asking how much ether I have,” explains the ethereum trader. “One of the cool things about Ethereum is that all wallets around the world are transparent and open for everyone to see. And this is my wallet’s savings.”
July 5, 2017 - IRS to Scale Back Bitcoin Account Data Request
DOJ trial attorney Amy Matchison said at a court hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley Thursday that the IRS has been in talks with Coinbase about narrowing its request to only items the agency would need to look for unreported income. In particular, Matchison said that the agency intends to retract its request for password and security setting information for U.S. Coinbase users.
June 27, 2017 - Legal Implications Surrounding Bitcoin
“Yes. A taxpayer who receives virtual currency as payment for goods or services must, in computing gross income, include the fair market value of the virtual currency, measured in U.S. dollars, as of the date that the virtual currency was received. See Publication 525, Taxable and Nontaxable Income, for more information on miscellaneous income from exchanges involving property or services.” Further remarks in response to frequently asked questions can be found here.
June 27, 2017 - IRS Virtual Currency Guidance
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is aware that “virtual currency” may be used to pay for goods or services, or held for investment. Virtual currency is a digital representation of value that functions as a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and/or a store of value. In some environments, it operates like “real” currency — i.e., the coin and paper money of the United States or of any other country that is designated as legal tender, circulates, and is customarily used and accepted as a medium of exchange in the country of issuance—but it does not have legal tender status in any jurisdiction.
June 7, 2017 - US Congressional Group Calls on IRS to Clarify Bitcoin Tax Guidance
"Further, we encourage the IRS to engage with virtual currency exchanges to better understand their ability to engage in information reporting, including recordkeeping to track realized gain or loss and identify the amounts of virtual currency used in taxable transactions."
June 2, 2017 - Why Bitcoin Needs Washington to Go Mainstream
Like the open Internet, support from government is key to fostering its growth. Fortunately, there are concrete steps that the U.S. government can take to ensure the country’s competitiveness in this booming sector.
June 1, 2017 - The IRS is Due to Present its Digital Currency Strategy to Congress Next Week
"[W]e strongly question whether the IRS has actually established a reasonable basis to support the mass production of records for half of a million people, the vast majority of whom appear to not be conducting the volume of transactions needed to report them to the IRS. Based on the information before us, this summons seems overly broad, extremely burdensome, and highly intrusive to a large population of individuals."
May 31, 2017 - Father, son sentenced for illegal bitcoin business on dark web
According to the guilty pleas, from at least 2013 to 2015, the defendants were accepting currency, money orders and money paks and exchanging those funds for bitcoin, a decentralized form of electronic or digital currency, existing entirely on the Internet and not in any physical form.
May 31, 2017 - IRS actions sets ‘dangerous precedent’ for bitcoin companies: US Congress on IRS-Coinbase dispute
The summons is estimated to affect 500,000 active Coinbase customers and would result in the production of millions of pages of associated records, many of which contain personally identifiable information. However, 90 percent of these customers engaged in less than $10,000 in cumulative, gross transactions during the entire period requested”, the Committee added.
May 31, 2017 - Republicans Slap down the IRS for Its Coinbase Bitcoin Tax Hunt
With several questions put to the IRS, members of Congress have asked the federal agency to get back by June 7. This will no doubt put increased pressure on the agency as it works to deal with Coinbase in an attempt to get the information it wants.
May 24, 2017 - Former LocalBitcoins Seller Admits He Ran an Illegal and Unlicensed Currency Exchange
It is unclear if this means every LocalBitcoins seller is now under scrutiny by the IRS. It was only a matter of time until this “revenue stream” would warrant attention from the government.
May 24, 2017 - Senate Letter to IRS Commissioner
Committees have a responsibility to examine Internal Revenue Service (IRS) actions in emerging areas of tax administration, including digital currencies.
May 24, 2017 - Did The IRS Overstep With Coinbase Summons?
The IRS says only 802 Coinbase users filed a tax form related to bitcoin in 2015, suggesting that many people failed to declare capital gains connected to bitcoin. However, many users have not sold any bitcoin at all through the platform, while others hold only a small amount, and the IRS is sweeping them in with the offenders.