Hacker News Reader

> he is NOT a US citizen or even permanent resident

Not paying taxes on a publicly-ledgered asset with a well-accepted monetary value that you then disclose to a government is the height of stupidity. If your friend’s home country has any tax treaties with the United States, I’d encourage him to get his paperwork in order with them.

View on HN

As far as I know, he owes almost no taxes. He is a resident of Monaco and it has no taxes on its residents AFAIK. The state of Maine actually invoked FATCA compliance as a legal backing for filing the form. I find that strange as FATCA is a federal law and if anybody would be enforcing it would be the IRS, but of course he is not going to argue with Main so he just ignored the form and left a month later. Probably not very smart on his part for ignoring it but he said there is no way he going to report all of his BTC assets to Uncle Sam simply for being a tourist visitor. However, for a US citizen/resident it could very well end up pretty badly as reporting assets that had not been taxed so far will get you state and federal tax (with interest) AND probably some fines. Not reporting it is even worse because the state (and IRS) now knows you have a BTC wallet and will assume you are hiding assets in it, which is both a state and federal felony. Anyways, it would be interesting to watch how this plays out.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com