Chris.d.woo

space-pics:

Sample of the SpaceX CRS-3 payload, a 1U CubeSat. The flexible tape measure on top is actually the satellite’s antenna, it automatically springs into place when deployed!
http://space-pics.tumblr.com/

Talk about your ingenious off-the-shelf solutions…

wamwanfood:

Pepperoni Pizza Burgers by The Pioneer Woman

This is one of those moments where I inhale deeply and my stomach growls.

popculturebrain:

Shawn, Amy and Alan to appear on ‘Girl Meets World' | Danielle Fishell on Instagram

(ht Chris)

Yaaaaaaaaaaay!

washingtonpost:

Yes. This is latte art. It’s real. 

Most taxpayers are familiar with the 16th Amendment of the Constitution which sets the stage for the collection of federal income tax:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

But that’s just the beginning. Since the 16th Amendment was adopted in 1913, additional federal tax laws have been codified and organized under the United States Code (U.S.C.). Today, most of those tax laws have been codified at Title 26 (26 U.S.C.) and commonly referred to as the Tax Code. It’s worth noting, though, that the Tax Code, or Internal Revenue Code, includes most – but not all – federal tax laws. You’ll find more tax laws in other parts of the United States Code, including at Title 11 (Bankruptcy); Title 19 (Customs) and Title 28 (Judiciary).

Title 26 is a way of distinguishing tax laws from other legal subjects under US law. The US Code is divided into sections and arranged by subject area referred to as titles. There are 51 titles in the Code.

Each title is further broken down into smaller pieces called subtitles, chapters, subchapters, parts, subparts, and sections. Some of the most popular subchapters in the Tax Code are subchapter k (dealing with partnerships) and subchapter s (dealing with s corporations). You might also be familiar with sections: those give rise to common tax terms like section 501(c)(3) (dealing with charitable organizations) and section 179 (dealing with expensing).

The Internal Revenue Code is enormous but it’s not the biggest title in the US Code. The most words, elements and sections are found in Title 42 (The Public Health and Welfare). The most words per section? Those are found at Title 23 (Highways).

Notwithstanding that it’s not the biggest title, Title 26 is still quite large: as of 2012, it was 73,608 pages long. But that doesn’t include a number of other important guidance documents, including tax treaties and Treasury Regulations, which are found elsewhere.  Treasury Regulations (26 C.F.R.) – or “Regs” as tax professionals call them – are the Treasury Department’s official interpretations of the Internal Revenue Code. In other words, it’s how Treasury (and thus, IRS) understands and administers the specific provisions of the Tax Code – a power given to the Treasury by Congress under section 7805 of the Internal Revenue Code.

For more in the series, see:

• Taxes from A to Z: A is for Affordable Care Act
• Taxes from A to Z: B is for Basis
• Taxes from A to Z: C is for Clothing and Costumes
• Taxes from A to Z: D is for DRIP
• Taxes from A to Z: E is for EE Bonds
• Taxes from A to Z: F is for Foreign Tax Credit
• Taxes from A to Z: G is for Garnished Wages
• Taxes from A to Z: H is for Holding Period

–

Want more taxgirl goodness? Pick your poison: receive posts by email, follow me on twitter (@taxgirl), hang out with me on Facebook or check out my YouTube channel. If you want to keep an eye on documents I’ve posted, check out my profile on Scribd. And finally, you can subscribe to my podcast on the site or via iTunes (it’s free).

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has released Bankruptcy Procedures Designed to Protect Taxpayer Rights and the Government’s Interest Were Not Always Followed (2014-40-013): Impact on Taxpayers The bankruptcy automatic stay provision prohibits the IRS from taking certain collection actions against a debtor (taxpayer) as soon as it learns,...

gailsimone:

Favorite bit of the entire film.

jtotheizzoe:

Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey

Let’s just all take a moment to asdfgh$glks@o#pf!sfoid;jn>?tlksjhjls……..

Cosmos is so damn pretty.

suricattus:

8bitatoms:

phoenixfire-thewizardgoddess:

sevvey6:

morbidamusement:

captain-snark:

bananamerlin:

maderadearquitecto:

Thermochromic table by Jay Watson

imagine banging someone on that table

imagine being home alone and seeing imprints on that table

noooooo stop

Imagine having a friend sit at that table for a long while, but when they get up there’s no imprints at all.

What if you got up after trying to console a crying friend, and found that you had no imprints… and they were crying because they missed you?

aaaah it was a cool table now it’s a horror/drama story

It’s a cool table AND a horror/drama story!  I want one!

jtotheizzoe:

sci-universe:

The countdown of Cosmos

Tomorrow, it happens.

northgang:

…the future of pizza (X)

Maybe even ordering all food ion the future ever. Though it would ruin dim sum to get rid of the carts.

itscarororo:

"I can’t recall the taste of food… nor the sound of water… nor the feel of grass.."

-Frodo “S.A.D.” Baggins

“I don’t know if some of you have been to these live reads at LACMA, where a classic film is read live on stage by actors who just sit and read the script. We did one recently of American Pie, but we reversed the gender roles. All the women played men; all the men played women. And it was so fascinating to be a part of this because, as the women took on these central roles — they had all the good lines, they had all the good laughs, all the great moments — the men who joined us to sit on stage started squirming rather uncomfortably and got really bored because they weren’t used to being the supporting cast.

It was fascinating to feel their discomfort [and] to discuss it with them afterward, when they said, “It’s boring to play the girl role!” And I said, “Yeah. Yeah. You think? Welcome to our world!””

- Olivia Wilde at the The State of Female Justice: Los Angeles panel (x)

So the way we do it, I’m the only one doing telepresence. Everyone else is back in Maryland. This is a group I’ve gamed with for probably four or five years now and I moved away mid-campaign so it made a lot of sense to try and keep me involved that way. In our set up we use an iPhone running FaceTime to show the board (which I use FaceTime on my iPad to view) and a laptop running Skype so I can see everyone else. We also use iMessage on the laptop to do the screen sharing.

We’ve never used Google Hangout but it could be a pretty good option, especially if it can do the screen-sharing stuff that I’d like.

I think the Hurdy Gurdy is the main reason I like the Black Sails music.

space-pics:

All four landing legs now mounted on Falcon 9
http://space-pics.tumblr.com/

Woah.

Before the Olympics, we often hear a fair amount about the preparations for the games — how much is being spent, the facilities being built, whether the city will have everything ready in time. But once the Olympics end, we hear very little about what happens to the infrastructure that millions or billions of dollars were spent on.

John Pack and Gary Hustwit’s The Olympic City project documents the life of Olympic infrastructure once all the spectators pack up and go home. As they explain,

Some former Olympic sites are retrofitted and used in ways that belie their grand beginnings; turned into prisons, housing, malls, gyms, churches. Others sit unused for decades and become tragic time capsules, examples of misguided planning and broken promises of the benefits that the Games would bring.

Flavorwire published some of their photos, mostly of sites that have been left to decay, leaving a long-term mark on the landscape of the locations that host the games. Here are just a few of their haunting images posted at Flavorwire.

Beach Volleyball Stadium from 2008 Beijing Olympics:

Ski Jump from 1984 Olympics, Sarajevo, Bosnia, and Herzegovina:

Train station built for 1972 Olympics, Munich:

Swimming pool at Lake Ahvenisto, Finland, from 1952:

This post originally appeared in 2011.

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

judgebunnie:

determamfidd:

blvckcoffee:

I did a rough draft of the black speech of Mordor.

 

One Caramel Latte to Rule Them All.

How the fuck does someone even do that?

jtotheizzoe:

mucholderthen:

SCIENTISTS, by artist Alan Kennedy on Flickr

• Galileo Galilei and the moons of Jupiter
• Isaac Newton: the motion of objects and spectrum of light
• Charles Darwin and descent with modification via natural selection
• Nicola Tesla and the age of electricity
• Albert Einstein and spacetime

The world needs roughly a thousand more of these, so please get to work Mr. Kennedy. I love them so much.

These are so good. I’d love to see a John von Neumann or a Freeman Dyson.

theatlantic:

Tom Perkins Has a Fascination, Radical, Un-American Voting Plan

The venture capitalist—who compared progressivism to Kristallnacht—wants to disenfranchise non-taxpayers and give wealthier voters more votes.

Read more. [Image: Robert Galbraith/Reuters]

Hmm. I wonder what would happen if instead your vote was augmented more based on your effective tax rate — especially once you add in payroll taxes.

So say you earn $35,000 in wages. That’s $2,625 in payroll taxes. Then you’ve got something like $3,274 in income taxes (this is for a single taxpayer in the 15% bracket taking the standard deduction and pretty much no other credits for the 2014 tax year; it’s almost certain they’d be able to take some EITC so in reality these hypothetical numbers are a bit off). That puts this taxpayer at an effective tax rate of ~16.8%.

While that seems low, remember that many wealthy taxpayers pay even lower effective tax rates. For example, Mitt Romney had an effective tax rate of 14.1% in 2011 (paying $1.94M on $13.7M in income; this doesn’t include payroll taxes but since the Social Security Wage Base is capped that means that for rich taxpayers it contributes a comparatively low amount to their federal taxes—maxing out at $4,485 in 2011 and $7,254 in 2014).

If you compared the hypothetical taxpayer with Mitt Romney’s tax rate, the hypothetical taxpayer would have something like 19% more vote than Romney. The incentive here, then, is for people to pay more than they “owe” in taxes in order to get better control of the government. The same incentive exists in Perkins’s plan, but here the playing field is slightly more level—While it is comparatively easy for our hypo taxpayer to increase their effective tax rate (1%=$350 in additional taxes) it is much more “difficult” for a rich taxpayer like Romney (1%-$137,000 in additional taxes). Though, of course, you could argue that for Romney $137,000 has less marginal utility than the $350 for the low-income taxpayer.

You’d probably also want to add in a few controls — perhaps a weighted average over the term of the office you’re electing (Two years for Representative, four years for President, six for Senator) to prevent someone from dropping large sums of money only in the voting year or subtracting transfer payments from the government to the taxpayer to prevent the rich from paying a huge amount in taxes to elect a friendly government then “instructing” that government to return that money to the rich voters that elected it.

I probably spent way too much time thinking about this, especially since I kind of despise the idea, but I do think it’s interesting from an economic perspective.

Each year about this time, mailboxes across America are filled with tax forms. Sometimes, those tax forms go straight to a tax professional, unopened. Other times, taxpayers may dutifully open those forms and type the information, box for box, into tax preparation software. In both cases, it’s not unusual for taxpayers to not have an understanding of the meaning of all of the numbers, letters and other information on those forms. That’s about to change.

This week, I’ll be dissecting some of the most basic tax forms for you. The more you know, the less scary some of these forms can be.

First up, here’s what you should know about the form W-2, Wage and Tax Statement:

A form W-2 is issued by an employer to an employee. That carries with it some significance and not only for tax reasons. An employer has certain reporting, withholding and insurance requirements for employees that are a bit different from those owed to an independent contractor.

The threshold for issuing a form W-2 is based on dollars – nothing else matters. Not time worked. Not position held. Just dollars (or dollar equivalents) earned. The magic number is $600. Every employer who pays at least $600 in case (or cash equivalent, including taxable benefits) must issue a form W-2. If any taxes are withheld, including those for Social Security or Medicare, a form W-2 must be issued regardless of how much was paid out to an employee.

An employer prepares six copies of each form W-2 per employee. Yes, that’s a lot of paperwork.

Copy A is transmitted to the Social Security Administration (SSA) along with a form W-3 (the form W-3 reports the total of all of the forms W-2 for the employer). The due date for employers to get that information to SSA is February 28. Copy 1 is issued to any applicable state, city or local tax department. Copy D is retained by the employer.

As an employee, you get three copies of your form W-2. Those three copies must be issued by January 31 of each year. Copy B is for use in reporting your federal income taxes and is generally filed with your federal income tax return (unless you are e-filing in which case you have to provide it to the preparer but it is not usually forwarded to IRS). Copy 2 is for use in reporting your state, city or local income tax and is filed with the relevant taxing authorities. Copy C is for your records (you should retain Copy C for at least three years after you file or the due date of your return, whichever is later).

The left side of the form is for reporting taxpayer information; the right side of the form is used to report financials and codes. The bottom of the form reports local and state tax information.

Here’s a closer look at each of the boxes on the left:

Box a. Your Social Security Number (SSN) is reported in box (a). You should always double-check this to make sure it’s correct. If it’s not correct, you need to request a new form W-2 from your employer. An error could slow the processing of your return.

Box b. Your employer’s EIN is reported in box (b). An EIN is more or less the employer’s equivalent of your SSN.

Box c. Your employer’s address is reported in box (c). This is the legal address of your employer which may or may not be where you actually work. Don’t let that throw you.

Box d. The control number is an internal number used by your employer or your employer’s payroll department. If your employer doesn’t use control numbers, box (d) will be blank.

Boxes e and f. These appear as one big block on your form W-2. Your full name is reported at box (e). It’s supposed to reflect the name that’s actually on your Social Security card (the SSA isn’t crazy about suffixes, even if you use them, so you shouldn’t see one on your form W-2 unless it’s on your Social Security card). If your name isn’t exactly as it appears on your Social Security card, you may need a new form W-2; ask your employer if you’re not sure. Your address is reported at box (f) and should reflect your mailing address – which could be a post office box – likely without punctuation (a USPS preference). If your address on the form W-2 isn’t correct, notify your employer: you won’t need a new form W-2 but your employer needs to update his or her records.

The boxes you care most about are those boxes (a), (e) and (f), as highlighted by the pink circles:

Now, here’s a closer look at the boxes on the right:

Box 1 shows your total taxable wages, tips, prizes and other compensation, as well as any taxable fringe benefits. It does not include elective deferrals to retirement plans, pretax benefits or payroll deductions. Since the figure (highlighted by the red arrow in my example below) doesn’t include those amounts, it’s not unusual for this amount to be less than the amounts included at boxes 2 and 3. It’s the number most taxpayers care about the most.

Box 2 reports the total amount of federal income taxes withheld from your pay during the year. This amount (highlighted by the purple arrow in my example below) is determined by the elections on your form W-4 based on exemptions and any additional withholding. If you find that this number is too low or too high, you’ll want to make an adjustment on your form W-4 for the next year.

Box 3 shows your total wages subject to the Social Security tax. This figure is calculated before any payroll deductions which means that the amount in box 3 could be higher than the number reported in box 1, as in my example. It could also be less than the amount in box 1, if you’re a high-wage earner, since the total of boxes 3 and 7 (see below) cannot exceed the maximum Social Security wage base. For 2013, that amount was $113,700. If you have more than one job, for Social Security tax purposes, the cap still applies.

Box 4 shows the total of Social Security taxes withheld for the year. Unlike federal income taxes, Social Security taxes are calculated based on a flat rate. The rate is 6.2%. The amount in Box 4 should, then, be equal to the amount in box 3 times 6.2%. Since you should not have more Social Security withholding than the maximum wage base times 6.2%, the amount in box 4 should not exceed $7,049.40. In my example, the figure is $50,000 x .062, or $3,100.00.

Box 5 indicates wages subject to Medicare taxes. Medicare taxes generally do not include any pretax deductions and will include most taxable benefits. That, combined with the fact that unlike Social Security wages, there is no cap for Medicare taxes, means that the figure in box 5 may be larger than the amounts shown in box 1 or box 3. In fact, it’s likely the largest number on your form W-2.

Box 6 shows the amount of Medicare taxes withheld for the year. Like Social Security taxes, Medicare taxes are figured based on a flat rate. The rate is 1.45%. For most taxpayers, this means that the figure in box 6 is equal to the figure in box 5 times 1.45% (as in my example indicated by the green arrow since $50,000 x 1.45% = $725). However, under a new law that kicked in beginning in 2013, an employer must withhold additional Medicare tax of .9% from wages paid to an individual earning more than $200,000, regardless of filing status or wages paid by another employer. Since your employer doesn’t know your entire financial picture, it’s possible under the new law that you may have to pay more additional Medicare taxes than your withholding depending on filing status, compensation and self-employment income.

Tips which were reported to your employer will be found in box 7. If this box is blank, it means that you did not report tips to your employer (this doesn’t mean that you don’t have to report those tips to IRS).

Allocated tips reported in box 8 are those that your employer has figured are attributable to you. Those tips are considered income to you.

There won’t be anything in box 9. The reporting requirement for that box expired a few years ago and the box hasn’t yet been removed from the form (go figure).

At box 10, your employer will report the total of any benefits paid on your behalf under a dependent care assistance program. Amounts paid out under a qualified plan which are less than $5,000 are considered non-taxable benefits. That number will include report the value of all dependent care benefits, including those greater than the $5,000 exclusion (if the value exceeds $5,000, that excess will be reported in boxes 1, 3 and 5).

Box 11 is used to report amounts which have been distributed to you from your employer’s non-qualified deferred compensation plan (this amount is taxable). This isn’t to be confused with amounts contributed by you. That shows up in box 12.

Box 12 is the kitchen sink of form W-2 reporting. Here, you’ll see all kinds of codes. Not all of the income coded at box 12 is taxable. Here’s a quick rundown of the codes:

A – Uncollected social security or RRTA tax on tips
B – Uncollected Medicare tax on tips (but not Additional Medicare Tax)
C – Taxable cost of group-term life insurance over $50,000 (included in your wages at boxes 1, 3 and 5)
D – Elective deferrals to a section 401(k) cash or deferred arrangement plan (including a SIMPLE 401(k) arrangement)
E – Elective deferrals under a section 403(b) salary reduction agreement
F – Elective deferrals under a section 408(k)(6) salary reduction SEP
G – Elective deferrals and employer contributions (including nonelective deferrals) to a section 457(b) deferred compensation plan
H – Elective deferrals to a section 501(c)(18)(D) tax-exempt organization plan
J – Nontaxable sick pay
K – 20% excise tax on excess golden parachute payments
L – Substantiated employee business expense reimbursements
M – Uncollected social security or RRTA tax on taxable cost of group-term life insurance over $50,000 (former employees only)
N – Uncollected Medicare tax on taxable cost of group-term life insurance over $50,000 (but not Additional Medicare Tax)(former employees only)
P – Excludable moving expense reimbursements paid directly to employee
Q – Nontaxable combat pay
R – Employer contributions to an Archer MSA
S – Employee salary reduction contributions under a section 408(p) SIMPLE plan
T – Adoption benefits
V – Income from exercise of nonstatutory stock option(s)
W – Employer contributions (including employee contributions through a cafeteria plan) to an employee’s health savings account (HSA)
Y – Deferrals under a section 409A nonqualified deferred compensation plan
Z – Income under a nonqualified deferred compensation plan that fails to satisfy section 409A
AA – Designated Roth contributions under a section 401(k) plan
BB – Designated Roth contributions under a section 403(b) plan
CC – HIRE exempt wages and tips (2010 only)
DD – Cost of employer-sponsored health coverage
EE – Designated Roth contributions under a governmental section 457(b) plan

In the sample form W-2, I’ve included three of the most popular codes.

Elective deferrals (Code D) are extremely popular. As noted above, these amounts will generally be included at box 3 and box 5 even if they are excluded from wages at box 1.

The cost of employer-sponsored health coverage is reported using Code DD. This amount is reportable under the Affordable Care Act but it is not taxable to you.

Excludable moving expenses (Code P) for qualified costs are an example of benefits which will be reported by your employer but are not taxable to you. If reimbursements are non-qualified, they will be reported as income to you in boxes 1, 3, and 5.

A lot of this is because my aunt was really involved in helping my grandmother out and ensuring her quality of life. There’s also some financial stuff that’s really troubling on the horizon since she earned the vast majority of the household’s income. There’s other stuff that I’m not even remotely comfortable talking about in such a public forum that are also on my mind.

It’s just terribly sad.

jtotheizzoe:

If I die today, I die happy.

I so want this. So want this.

wildcat2030:

To celebrate the 38th anniversary of the liberation of Da Nang, the government of Vietnam has constructed the world’s largest dragon-shaped bridge over the Han River. Not only is it the steel bridge the largest of its type in the world, but it is covered in over 2,500 LED lights - and it breathes fire!

I often think that the eastern span of the Bay Bridge should have turned out like this…

So I received a package in the mail today, and it was a package of SpellJammer books I nicked off eBay. SpellJammer is an old 2nd Edition Advanced D&D module published by TSR (in 1989!) which takes the standard fantasy tropes of AD&D and puts them…IN SPACE! Well, sort of.

The idea was to unify the disparate campaign settings of AD&D (such as Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, or Ravenloft settings). In essence the universe of Spelljammer was a massive Ptolemaic expanse where other campaign settings were set inside their own “crystal spheres.” Inside the spheres were the solar system within which the campaign took place. These systems could be flat worlds, toruses, or regular old spheres. They could be heliocentric, geocentric or whatever you wanted to think up (I believe there’s a fan-made version of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld running around the internet somewhere but I lost track of it).

Ships could sail between worlds upon something akin to the “luminous aether.” If you remember Disney’s Treasure Planet movie (another forgotten gem) then you know what kind of space transportation we’re talking about. This was also the campaign setting that expanded on the Mind Flayer/Illithid species greatly and invented the Neogi which have appeared in later editions.

Spelljammer, sadly, hasn’t really been in a Wizards of the Coast edition of D&D and has all but been abandoned. However, these sourcebooks are still pretty great and if you know your 2nd Ed. stuff are really worth a read.

What I got:

• The Spelljammer box set, which includes two books: Concordance of Arcane Space and Lorebook of the Void. Concordance lays out the rules of the setting and Lorebook — as its name implies — sets out the history of the Spelljammer universe. There’s also four maps and a host of info sheets about pre-built ships from various races (the Illithid Nautilus has been my favorite since I first laid eyes on it when I was six or seven in the 90s).
• Dungeon Master’s Screen, w/ punch-out papercraft ship tokens
• Practical Planetology, a handbook on designing planets.
• Space Lairs, which appears to be sample dungeons.
• The Complete Spacefarer’s Handbook, which is additional campaign reference for the setting.

As the Internal Revenue Service and Congress remain mostly quiet on how to treat Bitcoin for tax purposes, tax authorities in the UK are about “to do an about turn on the taxation of Bitcoin.” The news comes from Richard Asquith, Head of Tax, TMF Group, who added that the new rules “will give a lot of clarity” to the taxation of Bitcoin and virtual currencies in the UK – a far cry from what we have right now in the US.

Under the proposed new rules, UK tax authorities, known as Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), will change its classification of Bitcoin and other virtual currency from a tradable voucher to private currency. Those changes closely mirror similar tax guidance issued recently in Singapore, a move that Asquith pointed out when he alerted me to the changes.

For British tax and investment purposes, vouchers have a monetary face value. If you sell vouchers at or below their monetary value, no value added tax (VAT) is due. Depending, however, on the redemption value, the transaction is subject to VAT on all or part of the value. When it comes to Bitcoin, if it’s treated as a face-value voucher to buy goods and services, it would be subject to full VAT on the value of the Bitcoin sold. Under this tax treatment, about 20% VAT would be charged each time Bitcoins were used. That level and scale of taxation was said to be killing off the Bitcoin market in the UK.

Investors, merchants, consumers and lobbyists alike balked at the old treatment. For some time, they put pressure on UK tax authorities to make a change. It appears that HMRC will now reverse positions and treat Bitcoin as though it is private money. On the trading side, that means that VAT would be payable on commission charged on exchanges. And while the details are still not hammered down on the consumer/trader side, indications are that HMRC would also make Bitcoin subject to the capital gains tax (CGT) but allow an exemption for those who hold onto them for more than a year (the equivalent of an extremely, extremely favorable long term capital gains rate). Other taxes would likely not apply.

You might recall that this is similar to a position adopted last year by Germany. Only a handful of countries have actually taken a clear position on the matter, prompting Asquith to comment, “If the UK tax re-categorisation goes ahead, it will stabilise the domestic Bitcoin exchange market which had been threatening to move out. It would also probably start attracting European and even global trade to migrate to the UK as it will be one of the first countries to have a well thought through tax regime.”

The US cannot claim a similar position – even as the popularity of Bitcoin increases. Last week, online retailer Overstock made news when it announced that it would accept Bitcoin as payment. It is the largest US company to date to tout acceptance of Bitcoin – but it’s far from the only company trying out the virtual currency. Smaller retailers are signing on, too.

Jennifer Longson was an early adopter when it came to accepting Bitcoin at her business. Her store, Cups and Cakes Bakery, with an actual physical presence in San Francisco, has accepted Bitcoin for payment since October 2012. It’s a easy process, just a click over to the payment page where payments are accepted via Bitcoin for your order for the usual suspects (red velvet, chocolate, and vanilla cupcakes) or whatever happens to be on the cupcake calendar for the month.

And despite the fact that Longson doesn’t have the retail volume of an Overstock.com, she says, about the decision to accept Bitcoin, that there “were lots of up sides with no down sides.” Customer response, she says, has been very favorable. “We’ve even inspired other businesses to take the plunge!”

And therein is exactly the problem with the failure of the US to take a position on taxing virtual currency: as more and more retailers jump on the Bitcoin bandwagon, it’s likely that we’ll end up with a serious compliance problem. In contrast, proactive, thoughtful tax policy will likely give countries like the UK and Singapore a real advantage over countries without any real guidance.

Asquith and others across the pond seem to believe that the US will eventually adopt some kind of policy statement on the taxation of Bitcoin. To stay competitive in a global market, they’ll have to.

Of course, all of these moves to figure out how to treat Bitcoin mean that we’re doing exactly what Bitcoin didn’t think it wanted in the first place: we’re labeling it. We’re categorizing it. We’re very nearly (gasp) regulating it.

As Asquith notes, this puts Bitcoin in the unusual position of moving “away from its original aspiration to be a global, unregulated currency.” Without some sort of regulation on the tax side, however, Bitcoin could find itself the victim of its own success. I guess they’ll have to figure out how to have their, er, cupcake and eat it, too.

–

 

Want more taxgirl goodness? Pick your poison: receive posts by email, follow me on twitter (@taxgirl), hang out with me on Facebook or check out my YouTube channel. If you want to keep an eye on documents I’ve posted, check out my profile on Scribd. And finally, you can subscribe to my podcast on the site or via iTunes (it’s free).

 

space-pics:

Camper-telescope
http://space-pics.tumblr.com/

Where can I buy this?