Average Joes are not going to have to track all there btc spending. IRS has no way of tying you to a anonymous bitcoin address. Nor do they want to waste time on it. Pull your head out of your ass.
Shhhh.
I prefer it if others offer themselves as sacrifices, it sates the beasts hunger and so lessens the chance of it hunting me.
this makes me feel better. i was worried that if i spend 50,000$ in a year they might make me pay taxes on it witch i dont think is right
lol.
But anyway, really the people that honestly think---and can't be convinced otherwise---that IRS taxing bitcoin gains will kill bitcoin are usually the hardcore libertarian types that help to hold back bitcoin. Regulation is inevitable and is actually a good thing, it basically means a major branch of the federal gov is saying that they think bitcoin is going to be around and widespread enough to warrant issuing guidelines; this and other agency involvement makes larger traditional finance players (banks, hedge funds, prop firms) take it more seriously as well as other countries then following suit and creating similar regulations and then, even more importantly, businesses will know how to handle it and feel more comfortable accepting it knowing that there are less unknowns about its future.
As for the actual tax implications/recent IRS memo, none of it is really that bad. Depending on your current income bracket, what kind of tax credits you get, and how much income you made from selling bitcoin, your liability could be close to zero. But if you made like $50,000+ last year just on cashing in bitcoin and aren't paying then fuck you cheapskate, pay your taxes.
As for the mining part, the IRS ruling was pretty silly, they should have just said that anything mined is unrealized gains until its sold, then once miners convert to USD they could be taxed. Sure miners could use btc to buy things instead and you'd get some tax avoidance but I can't see this amount being relevant as far as federal revenue goes.