Step 2: Buy stuff with bitcoins, possibly laundering them.
Step 3: Go to jail for intentional tax fraud. Good luck.
You need to spend those bitcoins to get some use of them - if you do it on a small scale, noone cares about losing 20 cents in tax; if you do it on a large scale, it becomes linked to you. For example - seller reports (for tax purposes) who/where they delivered goods; any bitcoin-money converter links your identity to this income; any bitcoin-vs-stuff barter can be a police sting operation, etc. Denying and laundering income is an old, traditional crime - and the same policing approaches that work with cash laundering will tend to work with bitcoin laundering as well.
Paying taxes costs some amount of money - but saying "good luck with that, tax man" can easily go over to crime/jail category; think twice if you want to go over to that road.
And as I understand it, Finnish people tend to pay their taxes proudly. (Might have something to do with the majority of their workforce being employed in the public sector.)
So I don't think this will really be an issue anyway.
Comments
Step 1: Mine bitcoins with plausible deniability.
Step 2: Buy stuff with bitcoins, possibly laundering them.
Step 3: Go to jail for intentional tax fraud. Good luck.
You need to spend those bitcoins to get some use of them - if you do it on a small scale, noone cares about losing 20 cents in tax; if you do it on a large scale, it becomes linked to you. For example - seller reports (for tax purposes) who/where they delivered goods; any bitcoin-money converter links your identity to this income; any bitcoin-vs-stuff barter can be a police sting operation, etc. Denying and laundering income is an old, traditional crime - and the same policing approaches that work with cash laundering will tend to work with bitcoin laundering as well.
Paying taxes costs some amount of money - but saying "good luck with that, tax man" can easily go over to crime/jail category; think twice if you want to go over to that road.
I'm too honest to go down that road.
And as I understand it, Finnish people tend to pay their taxes proudly. (Might have something to do with the majority of their workforce being employed in the public sector.)
So I don't think this will really be an issue anyway.