Other than that I like the idea. Although, the only reason I can think of why a developer would use btcworkers rather than your USD counterparts would be for anonymity (read: avoid paying income tax). What are the other benefits to being paid in bitcoins?
I think you know this, but perhaps not all readers do: you still are actually required to pay tax on earnings in BTC - just not declaring the income is illegal (and the authorities _are_ likely to notice if you're making a large amount of it and converting it back to your home currency to spend).
Good point. But I would argue that receiving payment in BTC makes it easier to illegally not declare the income. Now that you can pay for all kinds of products and services using BTC there's no need to convert it to another currency first. The only way to trace it would be if the employer filed a 1099, which they're still incentivized to do in order to write the payment off as a cost instead of profit.
Hypothetically, what if you only bartered and never used 'money'? Would you be required to sell a goat or cow in order to get the cash to pay taxes? Would someone from the IRS just show up and take a goat to sell if you didn't pay?
In the US and the UK, income is income however earned in whatever currency or form transacted (i.e., whether cash, sex, goats, or blessings).
The IRS does not accept payment in goats. They could secure a court order requiring you to sell the goat, or allowing them to sell the goat to satisfy your tax liability (with the excess returned to you).
> The Internal Revenue Code is not a mechanism for enforcing other codes of law, such as criminal law. [2] A person’s taxable income will generally be subject to the same Federal income tax rules, regardless of whether the income was obtained legally or illegally.
Also, Yale Law has a PDF entitled "Taxing Income from Unlawful Activities" (1974):
> When income from unlawful activities is reported, the taxpayer often supplies his name, address, and net income (usually in round figures, with such laconic labels as "miscellaneous income" or "income from various sources") and leaves the rest of the return blank.
The whole PDF is actually a very interesting historical study of the ins and outs of taxing ill-gotten gains.
I think you know this, but perhaps not all readers do: you still are actually required to pay tax on earnings in BTC - just not declaring the income is illegal (and the authorities _are_ likely to notice if you're making a large amount of it and converting it back to your home currency to spend).