Can BITCOINs Defeat IRS Tax Thieves?

[Harvester]

Wow, three posters to this thread know the IRS collects on a scam. That's a record isn't it?

And the quatlosers are layering on the fearmongering a bit thick, no? Okosh, you're wrong on the anonymity in BITCOIN. To demonstrate that point, send me your bitcoin address and I'll send you a bitcoin. Then try to identify me. You'll be quite challenged, just like the researchers in the article you posted who couldn't identify the thief. Of course thieves & hackers are interested in bitcoin, the digital wallet contains real value!

[Paul]

I first posted my question about what part of the 16th Amendment Hurt didn't understand after first quoting this post of his:

When we see that the constitution says something, we go looking for why the IRS disobeys it, and we seek to hold its agents accountable. When the courts say it means precisely the opposite of what it says, we go looking for reasons, and often we insist or demand adherence to the constitution as we read it.

I quoted the 16th Amendment in full: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."

So the constitution imposes only 3 limits on Congress' power to tax: direct taxes must be apportioned, others must be uniform throughout the states, and no taxes on exports. The income tax is not imposed on exports and it's uniform, and the 16th amendment says taxes on incomes (not "taxes on privileges measured by income") don't have to be apportioned. That's what the constitution says.

His response?

So that means,as the Supreme Court ruled, the 16th amendment's removal of apportionment from Congress' power to tax incomes thereby moved income tax into the indirect tax category like excises, for all direct taxes operate (and ONLY indirect taxes don't operate) by the rule of apportionment. What part of that do YOU not understand?

Furthermore, as the Supreme Court ruled, the income tax does NOT tax incomes because incomes constitute PROPERTY, and any tax on property, the court said, is a direct tax.

So Hurt is upset because the constitution says one thing and the courts say another. I point out what the constitution says, and he responds with a bunch of crap that he claims the courts said.

Which is it, Hurt? What the courts say or what the constitution says? Or are your arguments all a bunch of cut-and-paste nonsense that you don't even read yourself, much less comprehend?

[Pottapaug1938]

Hurt's "logic", if we can dignify it thus, works like this: 1) decide how you feel about the income tax; 2) decide that your feelings are the only legally correct way to feel about the income tax; 3) look for quotes and phrases which you can use to buttress your contentions; and 4) reject as corrupt or erroneous any evidence to the contrary; and explain away the efforts of anyone who seeks to change your mind as the result of ignorance, avarice, corruption, self-interest, conspiracy, or any combination thereof. In short: make up your mind first, and don't let the facts confuse you.

[Famspear]

Bob Hurt wrote:

Furthermore, as the Supreme Court ruled, the income tax does NOT tax incomes because incomes constitute PROPERTY.....

No, Bob. That's gibberish. Neither the U.S. Supreme Court nor any other federal court has ruled any such thing.

[lorne]

Been using bitcoin for several months now, my busines now accepting it as payment too, no problem. Well I did get burned once, guy I met online didn't send what he said, but it was small amount. If you're buying, deal with trusted sellers or use escrow. If you get serious with bitcoin you need to protect the digital wallet against 2 things: castastrophic loss and theft. The loss bit is fairly easy, just copy it to another location. We protect against theft with strong passwords, encrypting the wallet, and sending proceeds to another wallet that's mostly offine. Kind of like the cashier dumping the til into a safe.

[img]http://www.bitcoinsacceptedhere.com/wp- ... reLogo.png[/img]

[Gregg]

Lorne, to those of you new to the site, is a long time known liar. His 'business' he would have us believe was that of Tax Preparer. He came to us being an honest tax guy/bookkeeper looking for arguments to dissuade his crazy client from using CTC to become a big time tax evader, was even gonna quit withholding for employees. Within a few weeks he was fully convinced CTC was right and he was being fooled for years.

Anyhow, since his 'business' was tax preparation and he no longer believes in income tax, I'd guess he doesn't have a lot of business left. And he has to logically be lying to someone. If he's not lying to us here about being a bookkeeper who has seen the light, he has to be lying to his 'clients'. Dig up his old posts, he's really just about stupid enough to be entertaining when he's not doing a racist stereotype of a barely literate black woman under another name.....

But do not under any circumstances make a decision based upon anything he says, if the man said it was dark outside at midnight I wouldn't believe it until I checked.

[Joey Smith]

Maybe Bob should take the $10 million challenge?

http://www.quatloos.com/hereisthelaw.htm

[Burzmali]

Wow, three posters to this thread know the IRS collects on a scam. That's a record isn't it?

And the quatlosers are layering on the fearmongering a bit thick, no? Okosh, you're wrong on the anonymity in BITCOIN. To demonstrate that point, send me your bitcoin address and I'll send you a bitcoin. Then try to identify me. You'll be quite challenged, just like the researchers in the article you posted who couldn't identify the thief. Of course thieves & hackers are interested in bitcoin, the digital wallet contains real value!

You are aware that the default bitcoin client doesn't use TOR, right? So unless you've done additional configuration, you've been exposing your IP to every time you send or receive.

[Harvester]

Yep, so what? The blockchain, which contains the entire transactional history, stores 33-char. bitcoin addresses, not IP addresses. Sometimes an IP address (& other off-network data) can be associated with a bitcoin address but generally not made public (Bitcoin Faucet is a notable exception). Perhaps you'd be happier if I restated it as: "bitcoin permits anonymity."

My offer still stands.

[webhick]

I have kind of a strange thought. I did a half-assed search about BC's anonymity and while I was reading on a year-old thread about the different ways to stay anonymous one popped out to me as funny:

If I really wanted to make an anonymous transaction, this is what I would do:
- Send entire transaction amount to a new MyBitcoin account as a lump sum.
- Set up a brand new (empty) Bitcoin installation using Tor.
- Every day, withdraw 5% of the transaction amount to the new installation. Bonus points: add some randomization to the amount of Bitcoins you withdraw and the time between doing it.
- Finally, send the transaction from the new installation

For some reason, my brain found a parallel between this and what Ed & Elaine did with the money orders. In a hypothetical world, if you could pay your mortgage with BCs, would this be considered financial structuring?

[Burzmali]

Yep, so what? The blockchain, which contains the entire transactional history, stores 33-char. bitcoin addresses, not IP addresses. Sometimes an IP address (& other off-network data) can be associated with a bitcoin address but generally not made public (Bitcoin Faucet is a notable exception). Perhaps you'd be happier if I restated it as: "bitcoin permits anonymity."

My offer still stands.

The blockchain isn't the problem, the initial broadcast of the transaction is. There is nothing that prevents me from compiling a client that maintains hundreds or thousands of peers, you set up a handful of such clients on proxies around the global and harvest transaction broadcasts, taking the first time a transaction shows up to identify the IP generating the transaction.

Of course now you've gone through the trouble of enabling TOR on your client so there's not much point to trying to track you.

[LPC]

In a hypothetical world, if you could pay your mortgage with BCs, would this be considered financial structuring?

If done with the intent to avoid a financial reporting requirement that would otherwise apply, I would think so.

[Burzmali]

In a hypothetical world, if you could pay your mortgage with BCs, would this be considered financial structuring?

If done with the intent to avoid a financial reporting requirement that would otherwise apply, I would think so.

Considering that I'm pretty sure that MyBitCoin turned out to be a scam, I'd guess the point is largely moot. It's like taking $200 out of an ATM, using the money to buy phone cards, selling the phone cards to other people making back $190 and then using that $190 to buy pot. While the end is illegal, and avoiding giving the dealer that $20 bills you pulled from the ATM will make it harder for the cops to bust you when they catch the dealer, I'm not sure if laundering money that is legal to begin with is against the law.

[The Dog]

The item below might be of interest:

Shadowy Figures: Tracking Illicit Financial Transactions in the Murky World of Digital Currencies, Peer-to-Peer Networks, and Mobile Device Payments

August 31, 2011 23:14


Sources: James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, Brookings Institution

From Baker Institute site:

The combination of the enormous growth in social networks, the complexity of peer-to-peer systems and software, and the number of Internet and wirelessly connected devices is altering the landscape of financial transactions at a rate and to a degree that is unprecedented.

+ Direct link to report (PDF; 340 KB)
http://bakerinstitute.org/publications/ ... 082911.pdf

[Cathulhu]

Lorne, go f*ck yourself. You aren't funny, just stupid.

[LPC]

Paul Krugman has written a blog post explaining why the bitcoin might be a good investment but a poor monetary system.

He has also concluded that the rising price of gold is a symptom of low interest rates and not fears of inflation. (Well, okay, fears of inflation might be driving up the price, because markets aren't always rational, but his point is that rising gold prices are economically consistent with low interest rates.)

[Burzmali]

Looks like Bitcoin is facing yet another crisis as the hash rate keeps going up and the dollar value keeps dropping making it a better financial option for bitcoin miners to buy coins instead of mine them (due to electricity costs).

That big bump in the price of bitcoins was from when some senators informed everyone that bitcoins can be used to buy drugs on silk road...

[Harvester]

Paul Krugman! Are you kiddin me? Really Dan, linking to that minion of the banking cartel isn't helping your credibility.
http://www.libertariannews.org/2011/09/ ... in-screed/

Yes, I'm still mining bitcoin. And not as an investment; I use it to transact outside the Federal Reserve system. [Claim of violating federal laws with impunity deleted by LPC as moderator.]

[Burzmali]

Yes, I'm still mining bitcoin. And not as an investment; I use it to transact outside the Federal Reserve system. [Claim of violating federal laws with impunity deleted by LPC as moderator.]

If you're mining coins, then you are likely exposing your IP to your mining pool, which will be one of the first targets the feds will have should they choose to bring down bitcoin.

[Pottapaug1938]

More news from the bitcoin front, courtesy of www.coinflation.com:

http://www.betabeat.com/2011/10/17/pric ... of-mining/