5 ms·

How would they enforce this in any way at all?

by antihero 9y ago

toomuchtodo 9y ago
Know Your Customer, requiring exchanges to provide the necessary data, etc.
- squaredpants 9y ago
  What about decentralised exchanges?
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    Tax evasion rarely works out long term.
    - tomschlick 9y ago
      Yup. Remember, it wasn't the police who got Capone, it was the IRS.
      - cinquemb 9y ago
        So the IRS is going to put the same amount of resources into each of the new mini - Capones as they did Capone?
        pavlov 9y ago
        Capone's transactions were not recorded on a globally distributed immutable ledger.
        cinquemb 9y ago
        Ahh yes, with a 100% provable 1-to-1 mapping to all US citizen illegal transactions.
        saalweachter 9y ago
        That is literally the IRS's job. IRS funding at the margin directly increases or decreases tax revenues, because they have more or less resources to spend pursuing tax evasion.
        cinquemb 9y ago
        Well if they contract out the chain analytics work to the most connected firms, I wouldn't be surprised if we found out that russian hackers are the ones behind helping americans launder their bitcoins/ether… Maybe Equifax has some engineers working on this right now for them!
        jandrese 9y ago
        Luckily the IRS has been kneecapped by Congress because they started looking into the finances of some sketchy looking conservative nonprofits. http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/18/politics/irs-scandal-fast-facts/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/18/politics/irs-scandal-fast-fact...
    - Rmilb 9y ago
      I think the people in the panama papers would disagree.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - tonfa 9y ago
    The trend is towards KYC compliance and automatic sharing with tax authorities. I assume after a while very few countries will tolerate exchanges not complying.
    - jMyles 9y ago
      ...and what exactly will they do about it? The question is about decentralized exchanges. Countries may choose not to "tolerate" whatever they wish, but the internet is under no compulsion to tolerate shortsighted countries.
      - tonfa 9y ago
        They can prosecute the operators of those sites, not like it didn't happen in the internet before. Usually some things survive, but at the cost of extra hurdles (e.g. only accessible via tor, but even there, some people got busted through bad opsec).
        jMyles 9y ago
        You mean the operators of web front-ends which provide access to the exchange? I suppose that's possible. But I don't know how long that will even be the main way that people access them.
        joshuakelly 9y ago
        Exactly — dapps are unstoppable, at least with any conventional approaches to internet censorship
        nrhk 9y ago
        If China's firewall can't stop it, nothing will
      - uncletaco 9y ago
        Regulate that ISPs block the protocols.
- energybar 9y ago
  Many exchanges that are crypto only don't have any KYC
  - arcticfox 9y ago
    The owners will get some interesting housecalls at some point, I'm sure
    - drdaeman 9y ago
      What if there are no owners? AFAIK, there are protocols for atomic cross-chain trading, and there are dapps that are hosted on the blockchain itself (and are part of the chain). I think dapps have ownership, but I won't be particularly surprised to see if bazaar would be able to try something about consensus-updated codebase without explicit ownership. That could go very wrong, but nonetheless that would be interesting experiment to witness (if anyone would dare, heh). I mean, not for tax evasion purposes, but solely as a "ownerless" software development model. Node software developers could be at risk, though.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    They will be required to, or nation state force will be used. An example: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-11-15/the-final-days-of-a-tax-haven https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-11-15/the-final...
peter303 9y ago
If they audit all your real cash accounts and see undeclared inflows. Only about 1 in 200 individual taxpayers recieve comprehesive audits these days.
- krrrh 9y ago
  If newspaper headlines start talking about how many crypto-holders are engaging in tax evasion, you can guess where those limited resources will be targeted.

How would they enforce this in any way at all?

toomuchtodo 9y ago

Know Your Customer, requiring exchanges to provide the necessary data, etc.

squaredpants 9y ago
What about decentralised exchanges?
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  Tax evasion rarely works out long term.
  - tomschlick 9y ago
    Yup. Remember, it wasn't the police who got Capone, it was the IRS.
    - cinquemb 9y ago
      So the IRS is going to put the same amount of resources into each of the new mini - Capones as they did Capone?
      - pavlov 9y ago
        Capone's transactions were not recorded on a globally distributed immutable ledger.
        cinquemb 9y ago
        Ahh yes, with a 100% provable 1-to-1 mapping to all US citizen illegal transactions.
      - saalweachter 9y ago
        That is literally the IRS's job. IRS funding at the margin directly increases or decreases tax revenues, because they have more or less resources to spend pursuing tax evasion.
        cinquemb 9y ago
        Well if they contract out the chain analytics work to the most connected firms, I wouldn't be surprised if we found out that russian hackers are the ones behind helping americans launder their bitcoins/ether… Maybe Equifax has some engineers working on this right now for them!
        jandrese 9y ago
        Luckily the IRS has been kneecapped by Congress because they started looking into the finances of some sketchy looking conservative nonprofits. http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/18/politics/irs-scandal-fast-facts/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/18/politics/irs-scandal-fast-fact...
  - Rmilb 9y ago
    I think the people in the panama papers would disagree.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- tonfa 9y ago
  The trend is towards KYC compliance and automatic sharing with tax authorities. I assume after a while very few countries will tolerate exchanges not complying.
  - jMyles 9y ago
    ...and what exactly will they do about it? The question is about decentralized exchanges. Countries may choose not to "tolerate" whatever they wish, but the internet is under no compulsion to tolerate shortsighted countries.
    - tonfa 9y ago
      They can prosecute the operators of those sites, not like it didn't happen in the internet before. Usually some things survive, but at the cost of extra hurdles (e.g. only accessible via tor, but even there, some people got busted through bad opsec).
      - jMyles 9y ago
        You mean the operators of web front-ends which provide access to the exchange? I suppose that's possible. But I don't know how long that will even be the main way that people access them.
        joshuakelly 9y ago
        Exactly — dapps are unstoppable, at least with any conventional approaches to internet censorship
        nrhk 9y ago
        If China's firewall can't stop it, nothing will
    - uncletaco 9y ago
      Regulate that ISPs block the protocols.
energybar 9y ago
Many exchanges that are crypto only don't have any KYC
- arcticfox 9y ago
  The owners will get some interesting housecalls at some point, I'm sure
  - drdaeman 9y ago
    What if there are no owners? AFAIK, there are protocols for atomic cross-chain trading, and there are dapps that are hosted on the blockchain itself (and are part of the chain). I think dapps have ownership, but I won't be particularly surprised to see if bazaar would be able to try something about consensus-updated codebase without explicit ownership. That could go very wrong, but nonetheless that would be interesting experiment to witness (if anyone would dare, heh). I mean, not for tax evasion purposes, but solely as a "ownerless" software development model. Node software developers could be at risk, though.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  They will be required to, or nation state force will be used. An example: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-11-15/the-final-days-of-a-tax-haven https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-11-15/the-final...

peter303 9y ago

If they audit all your real cash accounts and see undeclared inflows. Only about 1 in 200 individual taxpayers recieve comprehesive audits these days.

krrrh 9y ago
If newspaper headlines start talking about how many crypto-holders are engaging in tax evasion, you can guess where those limited resources will be targeted.