Do We Have To Pay Taxes?

Benjamin Franklin said there were only two things certain in life: death and taxes

Hi everyone,

My goal for today WAS to create an article about masternodes and explain what is it about and why so many people fear investing in masternodes, comparing many of them to ponzi scheme. But this topic will have to wait another few days. So stay tuned and check my profile again in a week or so :)

Reason for this last minute change of article was inspired by one of my steemit collegues.
Just a moment ago, I came across a post written by @richardgerald that attracted my attention: "What I can do to promote steem". Seeing that Richard is struggling to get any engagement I decided to help and promote his content. Especially since he touched on a subject that bothered me a lot lately related to taxes on steemit.
So if you have a chance then visit his latest post and show some support:
https://steemit.com/steemjet/@richardgerald/what-i-can-do-to-promote-steem

"What I can do to promote steem?"

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This is one of the many questions I've been asking myself recently. Since I strongly believe in the future of Steemit I would like to see it grow bigger. That's pretty obvious, but how do we achieve this? Did you guys ever try to bring new people onto this platform and explain what Steemit is about and how is it different it is from traditional blogs/social media platforms?

Within the past few weeks I went through a number of conversations with random people and I attempted many times to explain what Steemit is and what are advantages of this platform over their "traditional competition" (facebook/twitter etc). At the end of the day I realized that I already abandoned being active on other social media platforms since I joined Steemit. Allocating most of my time to build my follower base on steemit allowed me to achieve results I could never achieve with facebook / twitter. That's a fact. So helping steemit grow bigger is important to me for obvious reasons.

I've also realize that I've huge difficulties while talking to people not familiar with blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. I've tried and failed so many times that I already lost count. So today I really would love to know your ways of explaining how does Steemit works and how to earn money whenever you're dealing with non-tech person with very little idea about blockchain and crypto?

Taxes and steemit payments

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What really attracted my attention was the fact, that @richardgerald in his post mentioned that steemit allows to receive non-taxable payments:

Steem as a cryprocurrency has a very unique and stable block chain. This blockchain is tax free

Getting the freelancer platform not to only accept steem as it's currency but also to run on the most trusted and tax free blockchain is the aim

As much as I agree with his reasoning, I also found it dangerous to assume that one day we will not become a victim of tax offices. At the moment it seems to be one of the safest ways to transfer funds using blockchain technology. It's almost like double-layer payments. Instead of sending BTC to a friend, I can purchase steem, transfer it to my steemit account and then send those funds to account that belong to a friend of mine. He will receive funds and just then exchange them to BTC. Obviously it's going to be harder for anyone to trace down such a payment.

That actually brought some worries as steemit seem to be the perfect place for money laundering. Can we really safely assume that we wont have to pay taxes and penalties for all received SP/SBD? I really would love to hear what's your thought on that issue.

At the end of his post Richard mentioned his dream:

Maybe someday I wall also own a store on the steem blockchain

I must admit that I thought about it several times as well. I dont think this technology is ready to be adopted into online shops yet. Maybe in the near future. Especially once SMT will be introduced. But shouldnt we be even more scared and worried? As long as steemit isn't big and isnt attracting goverments/regulators attention and we may sleep calmly. That I know.

Final questions:

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Does anyone here ever worry that all our received rewards and completed payments done on steemit will be taxable and some of us can get in trouble for "avoiding taxes"? Please share your view on that issue with me as I would love to know your opinion.

Luckily Im way to small to actually earn any decent amount of funds here, but there are many big players who earned fortunes on Steemit. Should they be afraid? Should we be afraid too?