Bitcoin targeted by the IRS, as bureaucrats demand private records from Coinbase
12/02/2016 / By Mary Wilder
Often referred to as the people’s currency, Bitcoin has been controversial since its inception. Since Bitcoin doesn’t require American citizens to be indebted to the government, many leftists are opposed to the idea, but conservatives, and especially libertarians, are big supporters of the new form of currency.
As was to be expected, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) doesn’t seem to be too fond of Bitcoin, and has plainly proved that fact recently. The IRS is seeking the personal data of everyone who made a transaction using Coinbase between 2013 and 2015, because getting people’s private information is what the federal government loves the most.
David Z. Morris of Fortune reports, “The subjects of the data request are identified in court documents simply as an indeterminate number of ‘John Does.’ The IRS filing further states that ‘There is a reasonable basis for believing that such group or class of persons may fail, or may have failed, to comply with one or more provisions of the internal revenue laws.’ In other words, the IRS believes that buying Bitcoin is probable cause for making an individual the subject of a tax evasion investigation.”
It just goes to show how far the authoritarians are willing to go in order to oppress the people of our country. People were dissatisfied with government overreach and a lackluster economy so they created their own currency. Then the government proved just how reasonable that dissatisfaction was by overreaching and deeming Bitcoin to be some sort of fraudulent concept. At this point, we should expect nothing less from the powers that be.
Under President Obama’s endlessly growing federal government, things have gone from bad to worse, and the government has been expanding far beyond the level that the average person would be comfortable with. Now, we have an IRS that is going above and beyond in order to tax people egregious amounts. Taxation is already theft, and we are already struggling to remain free, so the last thing we need is the government getting even larger.
Bitcoin really is the people’s currency, and it should remain as such. The government involving itself in these exchanges needs to end immediately. Hopefully, under President Trump things will change quickly and the power of the Feds will shrink substantially. Maybe then we will be free to use Bitcoin at our own discretion without having to worry about being added to a registry.
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