It is very far from simple anywhere, especially in the US: It isn't perfectly clear if you should treat bitcoins as commodity or currency. See [0] for more details.
As a general rule, if anyone tells me "but taxes aren't complicated" or "but what's the complication", I know they are talking from ideals and not experience.
The Federal US tax code, last time I looked at it (2009) was over 71,000 pages (add a few more thousands per state). It doesn't get shorter with time. Of those, "only" 20,000 or so apply to every individual (not the same 20,000). Other countries are better, but the shortest country tax code I've had the pleasure (?) of dealing with was only 4,000 pages of printed text.
Intrastate/intracountry transactions are usually complicated, but somewhat tractable. Cross-border transactions are usually ill-specified, can be classified in multitude of ways all technically legal - and yet, if the tax authorities in either country things you've done it wrong, you are assumed guilty until proven innocent.
Anyone who is not scared of the tax code has not had to wrestle it. You may win some battles after working hard. But you never want to go into this war.
As a general rule, if anyone tells me "but taxes aren't complicated" or "but what's the complication", I know they are talking from ideals and not experience.
The Federal US tax code, last time I looked at it (2009) was over 71,000 pages (add a few more thousands per state). It doesn't get shorter with time. Of those, "only" 20,000 or so apply to every individual (not the same 20,000). Other countries are better, but the shortest country tax code I've had the pleasure (?) of dealing with was only 4,000 pages of printed text.
Intrastate/intracountry transactions are usually complicated, but somewhat tractable. Cross-border transactions are usually ill-specified, can be classified in multitude of ways all technically legal - and yet, if the tax authorities in either country things you've done it wrong, you are assumed guilty until proven innocent.
Anyone who is not scared of the tax code has not had to wrestle it. You may win some battles after working hard. But you never want to go into this war.
[0] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Tax_compliance