I think they will only go back a couple of years, two or three years,” said one industry insider.
I mean, "only" going back a couple of years? Some people could actually owe thousands of pounds in back-taxes.
All while regulations weren't exactly clear a couple of years ago.
If they find something that could be to their advantage, even if the laws and regulations years ago weren't correctly translated, they'd do it. As I've said a hundred of times, the government will always find ways to fuck its citizens a thousand times over just to extract money from them in the form of taxes. One trader who made tens of thousands just a year ago and is now suffering heavy losses would still need to pay taxes because he did that feat even when
there are no laws stating that the trader is obligated to pay taxes on their crypto gains. More likely it results in a negative for Capital Gains. This should lower your amount of owing taxes depending on the tax system involved. If they tax you on the gain you receive "relief" on the loss. What I would look into more is whether or not they create a barter ruling. If you are using it to buy goods as opposed to cashing out it isn't treated as a capital gain. I'm not sure if that can be used in the case of services offered or not.
Would the government even consider that though? The more you know..
There is no money to be made going after small fish. They will hope that a pop-up or notice is enough to convince you to dig and report enough to be close to accurate and compliant. They will be looking into people who move around and trade in the 10's of thousands to millions a year. I wouldn't be surprised if in a few years exchanges were filing tax documents and no longer leaving it up to the customers.
Well on where I'm at, small fishes are often targeted because the governments and law enforcement themselves protect the big fishes. So yeah, expect that more and more small-time traders would be targeted by this ruling and only a handful of big fishes in the scene.