The IRS wants to spy on cryptocurrency users and people interested in cryptocurrency

published Jul 09, 2019

And they plan to do so in the most deceptive of ways.

Source: this tweetstorm.  Don't forget to download the slides!  (Here is the original link to the slides.)  Start at page numbered 94 for the creepy details.

I recently got hold of a presentation given to special agents in the IRS Criminal Investigation division that discussed investigating taxpayers who hold crypto.

I went through all of the 181 horribly formatted slides (attached for reference haha) and here's what I learned...

The IRS plans to use interviews, open-source searches, electronic surveillance, social media searches, and Grand Jury subpoenas given to a variety of companies.

You would think that these subpoenas would be served to crypto exchanges, but the IRS plans on serving them to Apple, Google, and Microsoft in order to search through taxpayers' download history to see if they have ever downloaded cryptocurrency applications.

Yes, they want your browser and download history, and they want you to remain completely ignorant that they got it.

Another slide mentions that the agents should be sure not to notify the taxpayer about the obtainment of information regarding their use of bitcoin, because such notification could be detrimental to the investigation.

The IRS also plans on serving subpoenas to collect bank, credit card, and Paypal records. These records should be analyzed to determine if any payments in or out went to parties that can send or receive crypto.

The IRS also plans to review Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms to find publicly available BTC and ETH addresses.

There is a ton of other information in there about crypto in general, tracing transactions via the blockchain, limitations of the blockchain, etc. but what you need to know is that the IRS is working HARD to identify criminal tax cases involving cryptocurrency.

I pray that none of you reading this get audited, but after going through those slides, it wouldn't surprise me if some of you do. If you reported everything correctly already though, you have nothing to worry about. If you haven't, let me help you :)

Keywords
taxation evil Bitcoin cryptocurrency only in the U.S.A.