RE: Is Ethereum a scam and are Ethers unregistered securities? Fiduciary Duty Attorney Jason Seibert weighs in
Are you referring to income taxes? Capital gains taxes? This is known and these can be reported. The IRS audit and charges are another example of regulatory risk and it's a risk each of us faces with very little information on how best to avoid it. Perhaps better information and guidance should be released by the IRS so that it can help law abiding or people who intend to be law abiding to reduce their level of risk through compliance. If people don't know how to comply or if there is no practical means of complying then it's unlikely there will be a lot of compliance.
The fact is, the IRS as an agency seems to despise cryptocurrency or completely ignore it until it's ready to do a John Doe summons? As a result congress is now demanding the IRS give some answers and honestly I'd like to know for myself what their intentions and plans are so I can reduce my risks.
Two decades ago, early Internet developers found themselves in a legal gray area. If old laws were strictly applied to them, they could be held responsible for the content that their users uploaded to their websites. In the 1990s, Congress passed the Communications Decency Act (CDA) and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The laws protected Internet companies from liability for what their users did. Without these laws, the Internet would probably still exist today, but it would be a very different, and likely less useful, tool.
A May 17 letter from three Congressional Republicans to IRS commissioner John Koskinen indicates that some in Congress may be prepared to flex their oversight muscle to protect taxpayers from the IRS’ unprecedented John Doe Summons.