"Yes, I loaded approximately 300 dollars into my Starbucks app for their virtual coffee money that can only be used in their stores."
Is that true? Sorry for my question, I don't know I don't do starbucks. I just assume something like that is handing them USD in advance, not that you're buying Starbux$ or something. That wouldn't really fit the question here.
My CPA is kinda up in arms about it, because of my second life business, and tracking L$ transactions is difficult, especially when you have 500,000 transactions per month.
Yes, you're paying them in USD in advance to load money into their app. But you can't pull the money back out as far as I know. All of those apps are essentially specialized virtual currency in that regard. It's like buying gift cards.
Virtual currencies have been around for a long long time when you sit back and really think about it.
My CPA sent me this today.
There’s A New Question On Your 1040 As IRS Gets Serious About Cryptocurrency
Days after the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) released two new pieces of guidance for taxpayers who engage in transactions involving virtual currency, the IRS announced another compliance measure: a checkbox on form 1040.www.forbes.com
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I am pretty sure gift cards vs. virtual currency are completely different though. When you buy a gift card, you're simply pre-loading a secured credit card with USD. I am not sure I'd classify that as any kind of virtual currency where the medium of exchange is not USD. With a gift card, its true that USD isn't simply "trading hands" but USD is still the medium of exchange, because the value of the card is only the amount of USD the card is good for.
You cannot take money out of that card and it's only good at whatever store you bought it for (I'm not talking about visa/MC gift cards). It's specialized, virtual currency. So when you take that same principle, put it into an app you scan on your phone, you've arrived at true virtual currency. And a lot of these ICO's were doing just that. Look at TRON
IRS said:Q1. What is virtual currency?
A1. Virtual currency is a digital representation of value, other than a representation of the U.S. dollar or a foreign currency (“real currency”), that functions as a unit of account, a store of value, and a medium of exchange. Some virtual currencies are convertible, which means that they have an equivalent value in real currency or act as a substitute for real currency. The IRS uses the term “virtual currency” in these FAQs to describe the various types of convertible virtual currency that are used as a medium of exchange, such as digital currency and cryptocurrency. Regardless of the label applied, if a particular asset has the characteristics of virtual currency, it will be treated as virtual currency for Federal income tax purposes.
I got 4 bitcoins, just biding my time waiting to sell. Curious to see what it will do with taxes when I do sell, since I mined these back in the day and held on to them. I assume it just be long term capital gains tax on them but I'm not that clear on the actual tax laws regarding them and its likely to change by the time I do sell them.
Just curious, why didn't you sell when they had been above 18K? Do you think they will ever reach that high again ?