RE: One Trader Made $200M Trading Ethereum... And Nobody Knows Who To Tax
Although the transaction was part of a blockchain, that does not make it illegal. Neither does it make any investment in crypto a way to finance illegal activities. What if you wanted to crowd fund a technology - isn't that what this is? It is not intended to fund Sheikh Yuk-a-Puk. As for the gain escaping taxation - isn't that yet to be seen? Good grief, who knows whether they made estimated tax payments or not? Finally, if there are tax consequences, the owner/s may decide that $400 million is enough to live comfortably in a tropical paradise with no extradition treaty... just saying... There are a lot of issues; no resolution will be easy. The SEC is trying desperately to stop ICOs and call them "securities", the IRS wants to tax people making gains and nobody can agree on how to handle this political football - even if they could find out who actually makes gains ... We live in interesting times.
This issue is so much more complex than most people give it credit for. The IRS worked forever to unlock the US owners of Swiss bank accounts and had to threaten to throw the Swiss out of the SWIFT system to even get that done. Yeah, and they're going to get a crypto exchange based in China to give up their data? I just have no idea how this is going to play out.
Bing a CPA myself, I'm just happy to not have any clients that are into cryptos - YET! Whatever advice I would give them would surely prove to be short sighted.
The world, it is a changin'