The Battle Between Bitcoin Users and IRS Continues with A Slight Twist

  The battle between Bitcoin users versus the Internal Revenue Service or IRS continues to a strange twist after one of the Bitcoin news portals, Coindesk, reported a while ago that now the government body has removed one of its target from its broad request data about Bitcoin users from the central government of the United States. For those who do not know about the situation, months ago, the IRS asked permission to the national government to list all of the Bitcoin users in the United States. Many of the Bitcoin users were furious about this because the main concept of Bitcoin is to make sure that everything is kept personal. 

Back in the December 13th, one of the Bitcoin users filed a motion which asked to the United States’ District Court for Northern California to stop IRS from collecting personal data of Bitcoin users. The user, named Jeffrey Berns, who is also a lawyer who is very instrumental in fighting the IRS request in court, believe that what IRS does destroys the act of online privacy. However, back then, the IRS suggested that what they did was justified because as a system of payment, Bitcoin should not be free from tax. In addition to that, IRS also believed that the owners of Bitcoin “may fail, or may have failed, to comply with one or more provisions of the internal revenue laws”, cited from the source.  

When filing the motion, Berns, who is represented by his law firm, argues that the method that the IRS do to collect data from the Bitcoin users may fall into the category of “abuse of process”. He also added that his act does not only protect him but all users of Bitcoin that may have become the target of private data mining from the IRS.  

However, the latest development of the issue suggest that effectively after 28th December court filing by the IRS, Berns is a target of IRS record request no more. The reason is because Berns has revealed himself in his own filling. In addition, the IRS added that the request was only for unidentified users, which automatically remove Berns from being targeted by IRS. Thus, Berns’ file is no longer workable and the IRS believe that it should be taken out from the court. Regardless his name being taken out of the data mining, Berns still argues that the data mining by the IRS should be stopped because it is breaking the law of internet privacy.