To be fair, most of the taxes we American citizens have to pay were enacted long before the IRS ever had a system to actually monitor and record our transaction

To be fair, most of the taxes we American citizens have to pay were enacted long before the IRS ever had a system to actually monitor and record our transactions. Another poster mentioned selling a used couch for $600 and having that be reported to the IRS. It would then be incumbent on the seller to prove it was a loss and not a capital gain. Now I assume the auditor would let the seller off the hook for something like this, but the key point is that a transaction that no one was reasonably expected to report is now reportable and must be documented.