To clear this discussion up, we need someone to chime in who has gone through the rigamarole of doing taxes on  Cryptomining.
Paying the taxes on bitcoin you mined on XYZ date makes no sense whatsoever.

Say for instance, you mined a 1 Altcoin on 7/11/16  at a price of $500 .  A month later the price of the altcoin crashes to   $15 dollars amd doesnt recover for the  foreseeable future. The value of the alt-coin is only realized once the altcoin is converted to  Fiat or used to purchase a good. Technically the Alt-coin is a useless abstract currency until this occurs.

So the IRS expects us to pay the taxes on a mined alt-coin, before we ever realize its true worth?  This makes no sense, but, if that is the case, then miners should immediately cash  out whatever they earned, then re-convert whatever fiat  they want to re-invest in the particular coin. This would make it much easier for the miner to organize their particular taxes.

A friend of a friend recently purchased multiple  Asic miners and   he told me hes going to mine, hold, and whenever he cashes out present the earnings as capital gains. He will  put down the value of the equipment used in column E on his  Schedule D 1040 form.  I view this all as straight capital gains.  I feel thats the best thing for us miners to do, even if the  IRS balks, your not going to  jail and maybe have to pay a small fine due to the fact that this is a new field, for us and for the IRS.

Another thing that may work is, mine, hold, and hope that  your countries economy becomes like Japans, in Japan you can use Bitcoin  as a taxless currency  for goods, rent, property, cars and food.   I foresee this happening after the price  of a bitcoin starts to stabilize around 100K, which should occur toward the middle of the 2020's

     Using Bitcoin in Japan: https://youtu.be/xrauYRGDCjY