If you're growing say cucumbers in your backyard and pickled them for storage. How would your taxman view that? Logically it seems to me that if you're not selling away your pickles, then there's no tax. But if you start selling them or trading them regularly on significant volumes, then there might be a tax.
Right, cucumber growing would be like Bitcoin mining, and I agree the IRS probably doesn't see that as income. But if you trade cucumbers for carrots, the IRS sees that as barter income, which they claim is taxable (at least if over a certain volume) at the market rate for what you received. So it would follow if you traded bitcoins for condoms, they would view the condoms as taxable income at their market value
