Similarly, I wonder if people making a profit from investing in bitcoin are liable for capital gains tax, and if so, how many people would actually report it.
Kind of off-topic to the issue of banks, but it's another legal concern for the bitcoin economy.
Everything I've read seems to indicate that trading in bitcoins works just the same as trading for barter, tax-wise. That is, when you get income in BTC, you report it as income worth what the bitcoins were worth when you got them, and then when you spend/sell the BTC, you report the capital gain/loss.
I'm doing my US taxes right now, and I'm trying to report everything in a forthright way. But it's a lot of busywork.