It's fine we agree to disagree, clearly you've got your approach and I have mine. I don't see any taxable event until it's exchanged. At that point you either have to average every payout at the value it was received or come up with some other clever way to establish a cost basis. The value it hits the wallet is cost basis, you don't have a taxable event until it's liquidated, it doesn't exist. I've seen several articles that argue both sides of this too, personally since Uncle isn't telling me explicitly how to handle it then it's going to be treated either like a stock or as a Beanie Baby.

About the pool thing, they only act as a conduit and some charge fees. If they "earn" 25BTC through YOUR equipment doing all the work, and then they payout all 25BTC it's a wash; guess they can report both sides, and technically maybe they should, but there still isn't a gain that I can figure unless they have a fee revenue setup. Now, if they consider the 25BTC payout to miners as a dividend payment it might be different, honestly we can dream these up all day. You need to go with the story that makes the most sense right now, stick with it, and see if we get a clear rule eventually. You might think I'm giving the bad advice, and that's fine, but I'm not putting myself out there as a CPA. I'm just a dude with a kinda cool job and I've been investing and filing my own taxes for 15 years, had to hire a CPA twice actually because I had some complexities... I digress, I'm a regular guy giving my take just a bit surprised at the advice. I have been skimming lately because I'm working on a project, but at a cursory review there were some things that didn't make much sense to me.

I wasn't trying to give the CPA guy a hard time or pretend I'm the expert, apologies if I came off that way, seriously to the guy I originally quoted no disrespect. I just think there is more than one way to handle it right now, and just because someone is a CPA doesn't mean they've filed BTC on a return yet, reasonable doubt- this is the internet afterall... Unless they set clear guidance there's no way I'll be reporting my toy bitcoins on my income taxes, just not gonna happen, at all. I love this shit, seriously, BTC is the coolest and I have a ton of fun setting up my miners, reading about it, chatting about it, the community is great, I truly believe in it: BUT, right now only a small amount of people (most users here) view it as a "currency". Personally, I view it as a collectible right now; and just like all the other collectibles (if) sold at a profit there is a request that you claim it (when/if you SELL it) using purchase price as cost basis and sale proceeds as gross.