Benzinga – Traders often forget about the capital gains taxes they owe on trading profits throughout the year.
But even if they did forget, nearly all of them still pay the taxes on what they’ve earned. Most will pay them without trouble, but some will refuse to pay capital gains taxes. Roger Ver, also known as “Bitcoin Jesus,” is one of the traders who refused to pay taxes on his Bitcoin (BTC) gains, which resulted in legal trouble.
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Ver started buying Bitcoin in 2011. By early 2014, Ver and his companies had allegedly acquired 131,000 BTC. At the time, the price of Bitcoin was around $800, so the position was worth around $100 million. Also in 2014, Ver obtained citizenship in St. Kitts and Nevis, a small island country in the Caribbean, and renounced his U.S. citizenship.
“Ver allegedly was required under U.S. law to file tax returns that reported capital gains from the constructive sale of his worldwide assets, including the Bitcoins, and to report the fair market value of his assets. He was also allegedly required to pay a tax — referred to as an ‘exit tax’ — on those capital gains,” according to the U.S. Office of Public Affairs.
Ver hired a law firm and business appraisal firm to help with the process of preparing tax documents but lied to the firms, which resulted in “false tax returns that substantially undervalued the two companies and their 73,000 Bitcoins and did not report that Ver owned any Bitcoins personally,” according to the U.S. Office of Public Affairs.
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Flash forward to 2017, and “Ver’s two companies continued to own approximately 70,000 Bitcoins. Around that time, Ver allegedly took possession of those Bitcoins and in November 2017 sold tens of thousands of them on cryptocurrency exchanges for approximately $240 million in cash,” according to the agency.
Ver was legally required to report and pay taxes on certain distributions even though he was not a U.S. citizen. He allegedly concealed from his accountant that he had received and sold Bitcoins and did not report gains or pay taxes on the distributions valued at $240 million.
“In total, Ver is alleged to have caused a loss to the IRS of at least $48 million,” the U.S. Office of Public Affairs concluded.
In an obscure post on X last week, Ver wrote, “Don’t expect bad people to do good things.”
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