Bullshit....They would send it back to you with instructions on how to submit it properly. Why waste your time typing that bull shit. Your probably convinced you can pay the court fines in pennies.
Lol. Yeah. There are red flags all over this thing. The entire premise of “a bot targeting 0 profit” itself is a bit of a stretch I won’t even get in to- let alone how that pencils out tax wise. I’ll point out that if you have a “bot” trading “24/7” you probably aren’t doing DSP etc. which means you’re almost certainly either going through a brokerage or you ARE the broker. Brokers are legally required to submit trade information to the IRS as part of their operations in finance. Brokers are bound by certain general agreements and rules for businesses like those concerning the prudence and organization which a business must operate under.
The language used etc. is very indicative of one who is speaking of how they think something works- like a tv show that doesn’t have all the details or chooses to ignore them because the reality isn’t that entertaining.
Oh yes, waste everyone's time and money and brag about it on the internet. That doesn't make you sound like a pathetic narcissistic douchebag at all. Well done.
“You can’t fight city hall, but you can $hit on the steps.” Quotes from grandpa. Sometimes it’s good to “stick it to the man.” Little acts of civic rebellion can be part of a way to bring change, to highlight inefficient or unjust policies etc. stuff like this though helps no one and hurts everyone. Usually people who aren’t the cause or even able to change things, and often the person doing it. How? Others is simple. It isn’t “the head of the IRS” or even some high paid pencil pusher that deals with that crap- it’s probably some low paid, overworked employee who thinks it’s as stupid as system as you. It’s tellers or cashiers or mail room workers etc. that are as far removed from “the system” as you can be while being involved in society. You slow down the rate other people get their refunds or can handle disputes- often while their financial lives, home ownership etc. hang in the balance while they wait and penalties continue to rise while they are delayed because of things like this
It also hurts the general tax payer because stints like this are why many agencies require electronic payments and highly standardized submission forms and guidelines that cause trouble for people who accidentally step out of that box. Many types of tax MUST be paid electronically or carry fees often in the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars to use cash to pay because they are discouraged due to the inherent trouble of processing, and the added frustration of trolling that cash brings. Businesses for example must submit taxes electronically and pay as such. Even people or businesses with out bank accounts must appeal individually to have non electronic means proceeded. Businesses like marijuana dispensaries or businesses that are on the “fringe” of technology or which banks won’t allow to hold accounts are penalized. Marijuana businesses couldn’t get accounts because despite state laws, federal law made their business a drug trade and thus banks would be knowingly laundering..
.. illegal money. So there are all these cases where people get harmed because the rules have to be designed to deal with cases that really would never happen outside extreme maliciousness or incompetence of a few.
YOU probably end up hurt anyway- asides any fees or costs and the significant financial costs something like this (probably fake) plan carry, the IRS already knows what you bought and sold. You are reporting it to avoid just paying a bunch of money. A “0 target” investment scheme in the way this person uses it (they are likely using the term wrong, 0 target would be a bot that sought to make trades where the trader profits seeking stock at $0, not a net of $0 profits..) would be one where you are selling some stock at a gain and some at a loss, but the end result is $0 which isn’t taxable. Assuming all your other finances worked out that way to allow no tax liability on ALL your trades- another sign this is BS- they say they included their “other stuff” so the IRS..
.. can’t “ignore” the fluff- but there’s no tax difference between your “$0 trades” and your “regular trades.” They are all submitted together and what you owe and wether you owe is based on a total of gains vs. losses, tax liability and credits and deductions of assets like property, depreciation, loss on sales, medical bills, etc. so yes, having more trades on the ledger makes it more complex to sort through to get that total, and in THEORY having all of a group of trades equal to zero while staying inside the requirements for writing off a $0 profit would probably just make it so that your tax bill was based on you “real” gains and losses- but not really. There are limits to how much you can claim on any years taxes and all sorts of things like that, so unless you were careful (let’s pretend they meticulously guided their entire financial strategy to stay inside those lines or it just worked out) you’d hit a cap.
Regardless of the complexities to make it work, the fact is that these little red flags like not knowing how submitting capital gains works are indications of someone telling a story based on a loose understanding of the concept you can write investments off on taxes for losses. But let’s look at this- if you buy a stock for $5 and sell at $7 you made $2. If we oversimplify, you’d have to buy a stock at $5 and sell at $3 to lose $2 to get $0. While you’re doing this the values will likely fluctuate naturally, and your selling or buying might change the price. To those not familiar- if you have 1000 shares of stock that are worth $1 each and you sell all 1000 shares, many think you get $1000. As you sell those 1000 shares though (it isn’t all at once) the stock may drop to $.98 a share. So you might sell 1000 shares “at $1,” but the first 100 make $1 each and after that it is .$.98 for the next 900. Of course selling that many shares at once could also cause the stock value to dip.
Supply and demand. If a company printed 10,000 shares of stock, that’s all there are. Anyone who wants part ownership in the company has to buy those. There are only so many up for grabs at any given time out of the 10,000. So you drop 1,000 shares and suddenly the thing no one could get, there are 1,000 of. That can influence price. So can the fact that seeing a sell off often triggers others to sell because they assume someone is selling for a reason they may not know, or because you are selling at a peak and they want to as well. So your 1,000 shares are joined by another 1,000 and at the very least there are now 2,000 for grabs if no one else jumps on. 2,000 of something isn’t as rare as 0. But let’s pretend it works perfectly and you get $1 a share for all 1,000 shares. You have $1,000 right? No. There are generally fees involved for trading. Those fees can count against profit or towards loss. So if it costs you one penny for each share you sell, you’re out 1,000 pennies. $10
Seems small right? But if you’re doing lots of bot deals to try and troll the IRS, that $10 times 10,000 trades adds up. Let’s ignore the money out of your pocket or whatever else. The point is that the IRS cares about every $10 in fees on every trade. Or more precisely- they don’t care. YOU care. The complexity of trying to hit $0 while balancing losses and gains is a lot already as we explored. Now add that you need it to all balance to $0 after fees etc. on qualifying trades ONLY. Let’s say for argument this person pulled that off. Let’s say that they also were able to reliably predict which stocks would lose value and which would gain value and every stock was able to gain or lose the exact amount of value to allow them to sell at exactly the right time to make $0 gross/net AND nothing that happened after they (the bot) decided to sell changed the numbers in a way that would cause problems. Ok. You did ALL that (which if you could do that you could just do as many trades that…
.. we’re profitable and there would be taxes but you’d make money and it would still be a mess for the IRS… because the complexity to do this is greater than the complexity to make a “guaranteed” positive profit. If you and the bit are that skilled there’s no reason not to make money instead of a “$0 profit” that ultimately loses you money. Let’s pretend that this person is just stupid rich and doesn’t care… that still doesn’t pencil out. As further BS evidence- choosing “$0 profit” seems like a way to make this more believable and “cooler” because they “aren’t in it for the money” and many people wouldn’t believe they’d actively lose money on purpose to do this and figure if it is “$0” there is no tax so it just “hurts” the IRS. Here is the big problem…
That’s not how this works. The IRS doesn’t give a shit if you take your credits and deductions. Most of you pay payroll tax right? Probably many get a tax refund? You have to submit a paper don’t you? A tex return to get your money? See… there are fundamental misunderstanding about taxes. Your “refund” is mostly just your own money. You overpaid. If they took $1200 out of every check or $100 or whatever and you get a refund, it means you have your pay role taxes set too high (usually you claimed the wrong exemption status such as “1” etc.) So say you pay $110 on a months wages and your refund is $120. all year your checks have been short by $10 because you only owed $100 a month. The $120 is the IRS giving you back the extra money. THIS IS THE IMPORTANT PART TO GRASP: you had to TELL THEM to give you back your money by proving on your taxes you were owed that money. They weren’t going to mail it to you.
A lot of people don’t actually have to do taxes at all really. If you paid the correct amounts or more than owed, you are pretty square. When you submit your taxes you are just making sure that you pad correctly. The IRS doesn’t really care if you overpay, they’ll keep the money unless you tell them on your taxes that you don’t owe as much as they think you do or paid more than they asked and should get money back.
The IRS cares when you underpay. They don’t keep track of all the ways you don’t owe them money, that’s YOUR job. They keep track of all the ways you DO owe like property sales, wages, stocks, out of state/country purchases without taxes etc. if they look and see the total value of your trades is $20k or $2k etc. when they add up the profits. They are expecting money from you. Your loses the “$0 profits” is something you have to show them. You’re saying: “excuse me, but I don’t owe that money because I actually lost money.” And they will say: “prove it.”
Your forms and documents are you making a case to them that you don’t owe money. If they can’t read it or make some mistake because your documents are a mess etc- it isn’t on them. They’ll just say “well, you paid $0 in taxes but you actually owed $10,000, so give us money. And penalties.” Cause here’s the thing- your 2021 taxes are FOR 2021 and due in 2022. The clock is retroactive. They can take 1,3,10 years to go through your mess of documents, or say it’s fine then go look back 5 years later and take 10 years to go through it all. So it’s been 15 years. It is 2037 and the IRS sends a letter you owe money for 2021 PLUS 15 years of penalties for what you didn’t pay. “I’ll fight it!” Well- with what a mess your crap is good luck with making a case in tax court and the bills for a tax attorney team to sort through your mess.
But let’s say that it takes you an OPTIMISTIC 5 years fighting the IRS… that’s 20 years and the fees don’t stop piling up. If you lose, you owe the original amount plus 20 years of fees and the penalties and the legal costs. You now owe the IRS, who can and will garnish wages and sell property, they can compel the banks to give them your assets, use law enforcement to take your assets, and they can take money from your estate after you die. Among other things. Unless you’re able and willing to live your life around “hiding” money from the IRS and the crimes and investigations of that- you’re screwed. Wether you win or lose though… the legal fees for you tax defense are on you anyway- and remember that wage garnishing? They wouldn’t wait until you lost to do it most likely. They’d garnish your wages before you lose while you are disputing. You can go through the legal process of dispute and you actually have decent odds of getting the garnishment reversed. But they’ll keep doing it
And each time you or your paid attorney will need to get it reversed. If they start to move on your assets or freeze them, there’s another set of headaches for you. Oh- and they’re going to report your tax status to everyone that it matters to. Your work will likely know, and regardless of wether it matters in your career or if you require security clearance or credit checks to hold your job, your office may just get tired of the hassle and replace you. Family life can become stressful of course too and cause problems. You aren’t likely to be making any major purchases like a home while having a substantial IRS delinquent debt either. And it is delinquent debt- so your credit is probably going to get hit one way or another. Unlike regular debt though, the IRS can (depending on the prevailing laws etc) restrict things like your vehicle licensing privileges etc. to complete payment. They can even potentially limit or forbid certain travel etc.
There are scores of 100% legal, gray, and other ways for the IRS to make your life complicated and miserable. Look up all the people who filed valid taxes in good faith and had potentially decades or life long issues with the IRS over taxes. They are a government organization that gets paid to make sure your taxes are collected. Whatever burden you place on them by some scheme like this, they get paid to sort it out, paid from your tax dollars, and then they have an entire encyclopedia full of ways they can screw you. Even if the IRS makes an actual mistake- if YOU wrote a number correctly and 100% legibly and their system messes it up- you’re probably on the hook. If you send a pallet of haphazard physical documents- how do you plan to dispute it if the IRS says that there were missing forms? And what judge etc. is going to side with you when they see a picture of what you sent? That’s like sending an egg through the mail in an envelope- no reasonable person would think
that you had packaged that sufficiently that the blame was in anyone but you. If you sent some disorganized monster mess, it is going to be most reasonable that such a disorganized packing method would mean it was just as likely or more likely that you forgot to put those forms in the package or that they got lost before the IRS touched it. Ignoring all the requirements and conditions the IRS has to allow them to basically reject that outright, even if the law said they had to accept whatever was sent and comb through it, they could literally take one look at your mess and decide they wouldn’t bother actually looking through it. Then they hit you with the full penalties and let YOU argue it in court. Since to win you’ll have to make your case and not just hand in a bunch of napkins and crap all disorganized- you’d either lose by default if you couldn’t make a case or you’d have to plainly and neatly outline your taxes and then you get to pay money to sort through it all for the IRS.
Which defeats the entire purpose of the plan since if you lose, they never looked through it and made a bunch of money off you that the government wouldn’t have. Yeah they spent money on the trial etc but so what? Your case is now a statistic showing the importance and effectiveness of the IRS and possibly leading to more IRS funding; and you’re just out a bunch of time and money. In the end, if you aren’t ordered to pay the full amount of taxes, the IRS would not have your “easy” filing and be done with that, then if you originally owed money you didn’t pay you’d need to pay that, and there could still be penalties and fees you now owe because of the time that has passed between then and now.
If the IRS comes down on you you will probably be the one that suffers, not them. If they don’t come down on you than whatever little game you’re playing isn’t even annoying enough to them for them to bother with you.
When the rubber hits the road anything like this is usually just causing problems for everyone except the people you feel you have reason to get “back at.”
Because of a credit due to my employer's bankruptcy, I had to file my taxes with paper for 2021 instead of electronically. Hope you're not expecting thanks or praise for tying up the IRS resources and delaying my refund.
The language used etc. is very indicative of one who is speaking of how they think something works- like a tv show that doesn’t have all the details or chooses to ignore them because the reality isn’t that entertaining.
YOU probably end up hurt anyway- asides any fees or costs and the significant financial costs something like this (probably fake) plan carry, the IRS already knows what you bought and sold. You are reporting it to avoid just paying a bunch of money. A “0 target” investment scheme in the way this person uses it (they are likely using the term wrong, 0 target would be a bot that sought to make trades where the trader profits seeking stock at $0, not a net of $0 profits..) would be one where you are selling some stock at a gain and some at a loss, but the end result is $0 which isn’t taxable. Assuming all your other finances worked out that way to allow no tax liability on ALL your trades- another sign this is BS- they say they included their “other stuff” so the IRS..
The IRS cares when you underpay. They don’t keep track of all the ways you don’t owe them money, that’s YOUR job. They keep track of all the ways you DO owe like property sales, wages, stocks, out of state/country purchases without taxes etc. if they look and see the total value of your trades is $20k or $2k etc. when they add up the profits. They are expecting money from you. Your loses the “$0 profits” is something you have to show them. You’re saying: “excuse me, but I don’t owe that money because I actually lost money.” And they will say: “prove it.”
If the IRS comes down on you you will probably be the one that suffers, not them. If they don’t come down on you than whatever little game you’re playing isn’t even annoying enough to them for them to bother with you.