to throw this all into a ditch..  the above only makes sense if you solo mine.. if you pool mine then you are providing work and the pool is then paying you for a service... so slap them with all kinds of employer taxes while we are at it and demand healthcare!!   Most miners never mine ANY bitcoins since they never find a block.  What legal papers/contract were signed between the miner and the pool?? Just proof of work/shares that isn't on any radar of the IRS.   It is like a bunch of guys pooling their money for lottery tickets.. only when things get big do the IRS start sniffing around for their cut

Should we all spam the IRS with millions of pages of records of $hitcoin mining and trading??  List billions of mined and traded dogecoin or the hundreds of worse coins?

And to take it further..  if you don't have autopayouts set, then you never got paid yet for your work at the pool until you do.. that could be years until you claim it just like if you were a contractor and did a bunch of work on  house but never got paid until 3 years later.  You suppose to pay taxes on the work you provided without getting paid??? And then what value was the BTC then? When the pool operator allocated into his ledger to eventual pay his debt to you or when you actually get it?

Income tax ran its course this 100 years and it is time to switch to VAT or whatever.