Taxpayer Advocate to IRS: We Need Bitcoin Guidance
A lack of tax guidance on bitcoin is leading to confusion and misperceptions among US businesses and could even encourage tax avoidance, warned a Treasury-appointed spokesperson today. Nina Olson, the Taxpayer Advocate, put pressure on the IRS in her annual report to U. S. Congress. Olson is the head of the Taxpayer Advocate Service, an independent organization within the IRS that represents taxpayers. Olson singled out a lack of IRS guidance around bitcoin and other virtual currencies as a particular issue of concern in this year's report, listing it in the "most serious problems"....
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Assault on the Internal Revenue Service continues. Now it is Nina Olson, the National Taxpayer Advocate. In annual report for 2013, presented to Congress she states that to this moment IRS was not able to anyhow clear the rules regarding Bitcoin with its lightning fast spread across the international market and how it must be treated according to the tax laws. Taxpayer Advocate Service (TAS), which Olson is a head of, takes upon the roles of unbiased spectator, advisor and taxpayers’ representative for IRS due to TAS being an independent institution within it. That way all the taxpayers’....
The US Internal Revenue Service finally announced its guidance for virtual currencies yesterday, explicitly referring to bitcoin (see the announcement here and notice here). The increased clarity - provided three weeks before the end of the US tax year - will come as a relief to many who were scared to get involved in bitcoin, commercially. But what does it mean for different members of the bitcoin community? US businesses wanting to get involved in bitcoin have been waiting for this for a while. As recently as January, US Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson pressured the IRS in her annual report....
The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance has said that bitcoin purchases will not be subject to sales taxes. According to a tax guidance memorandum from the agency's Taxpayer Guidance Division dated 5th December (hat tip Marco Santori), digital currencies are a type of "intangible property" and, as such, are not subject to a sales tax when purchased. The move comes months after the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) released its initial guidance on taxing bitcoin as a type of property, and provides an answer to a long-brewing question about how state sales taxes in the US may....
The IRS is sending letters to bitcoin investors again, warning them about potential misreporting and, according to its own watchdog, violating their rights. The post Do The IRS Crypto Tax Letters Violate Taxpayer Rights? appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.
For some, the OCC's recent stablecoin guidance, while helpful, raises as many issues as it clarifies.