Also, as a consumer, if you have 2 bitcoins in your wallet one day (let's say for simplicity sake you bought the. For $1 each) and then you go buy a cup of coffee for $2, but at the time of your purchase, your bitcoins doubled in value and are now worth $4 so you only need to spend one of them. Now in the eyes the government you just PROFITED $1.
So? You
did profit $1. You started with a bitcoin worth $1, and exchanged it for a cup of coffee worth $2. Unless your accountant is skilled at bistromathics, $2 - $1 = $1 profit.
For now at least, it is completely not feasible for any consumer to keep track of this. And you can say yes it's impossible to keep track of AND enforce....but the tax manwillnot give a fuck if they audit you. "You didn't keep diligent records on your bitcoin purchases and expenditures....fuck you, pay me."
Actually, it's impossible
not to keep track of this. Your wallet software keeps track of all your transactions, so all you have to do is export it to a spreadsheet, email it to your accountant and let them figure it out. Simple (unless you're the accountant, but that's you get paid for).
Point taken, but this does not make using bitcoin easier or more attractive to either the consumer or the merchant. I thought bitcoin was supposed to eliminate the middleman? Seems to me it's becoming more complicated and therefore more middlemen/opportunities for middlemen will pop up. To be clear, I am NOT against the IRS taxing of bitcoin, but I think it should be treated as a foreign currency, not property.
Maybe you can clear this up for me. Let's go back to the coffee analogy. Let's say one day I buy a bitcoin for $1. The next day I but a bitcoin for $2 because the worth has doubled. I now have 2 bitcoins worth $4, one has doubled in value but the other still has the same worth as what I bought it for. If I buy a coffee for $2 with one bitcoin, how do we know which bitcoin I used to buy the coffee? They are all in the same wallet. So essentially I have two bitcoins...one of them I would owe capital gains tax of $1 if I used it to buy the $2 coffee. The other bitcoin I would owe no capital gains tax on if I used that bitcoin. How is that determined? And I'm not being a dick...I really just don't understand how that would work.