Quote from: Peter Lambert on August 22, 2013, 10:49:13 PM

Quote from: kik1977 on August 22, 2013, 09:53:38 PM

Guys, I do not understand this thing and I keep on reading it here over and over again. So many people celebrating the fact that the State cannot tax bitcoins and shouting proudly "They cannot tax it, it's anonymous!!"

.. Let's imagine for a second that all the different currencies disappear and there is only BTC..

If a Government is not able to tax your earnings (which will be in BTC, remember, it's the only currency you have), how is anything going to work? Who's paying for any public service, for your roads, water, trash, schools, etc.?

If by any means anyone want BTC to succeed and become mainstream, it MUST be taxed as any other currency.
Which could be difficult or not, but that's another topic...

Have you ever wondered how taxes worked back before we had electronic currencies, back when everybody used cash? How could that possibly work? The answer is that taxes do not derive from people using USD, they are derived from people REPORTING their own tax liabilities. People can fill out tax forms for earnings in bitcoins just like the filled out tax forms for earnings in dollars.

Is trash a public service? Seems perfectly reasonable to expect people to pay a company to come take their trash away (at my previous residence I used this setup, my current residence has city-run trash pickup (but you can look at a city as just a company which provides services within a geographical region)).

Is water a public service? I pay the water company, they make water available to me, so no need for taxes.

I understand what you mean and I tend to agree in principle. Maybe I didn't explain properly what I meant: what I don't agree with, is hearing people seeing bitcoins as a way not to pay taxes. And they think this is a smart move, not understanding that by not paying taxes, they penalise the honest ones.

I love bitcoins because I can store my money, pay for goods, transfer money to other people WITHOUT making banks reacher (along with other good and ethic reasons), not because by using them I could potentially avoid to pay taxes thus forcing someone else to pay more..