Re: Is Anonymous E-Cash Dead?

From: Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@turbont.net)
Date: Mon Jul 17 2000 - 08:27:31 MDT


James Wetterau wrote:
>
> Brian Atkins says:
> ...
> > to open an account with a US stock brokerage, and again using the
> > freedom software you could anonymously trade..
>
> Umm, US laws don't generally permit this type of thing, I think,
> though I'm not 100% positive. Certainly my brokerages wanted a *lot*
> of information about me, including IRS good standing. I guess there
> might be some that do it, but I think the SEC would take a dim view.
>
> > ... transfer your profits
> > occasionally back to the bank account, and from there to your US
> > bank account. You could tell the IRS you don't know who these magic
> > payments come from, perhaps a secret admirer :-) And voila, no more
> > capital gains taxes. ...
>
> Then, even worse, it's income! Even if it's an anoymous gift (yeah,
> right, the IRS believes that) you still owe income taxes on it.
> Income taxes are worse than capital gains taxes for non-trivial
> incomes. At least with regular capital gains they're exempt from any
> income taxes, municipal, state or federal.

Yes, unless your account is a numbered account at a bank that does not bend over
for the IRS, the IRS can track you down. Outside of numbered accounts, living in
a cash economy, avoiding accounts, credit cards, ATMs, etc. is the only way to
disguise your actual income. Even that though, is coming to an end. One feature
of the new cash being printed are embedded, readable codes, which a new
generation of scanning devices are meant to be able to process, so even your
cash transactions can be tracked by the serial number of the bills. The bank
will report what checks were cashed in return for the bill serial numbers, so
they can track the bill from the time you cash a check to the point you spend it
(the restaurant, store, etc that receives your cash will deposit it at their
bank, which will scan in the bills. The IRS will know where you spend every
dollar bill.



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