No wonder the USA is on such a serious decline. The more that the federal reserve prints money and therefore depreciates the value of currency the more taxes it collects from people that don't keep their money in cash (where it would just become worthless). If you put your money in gold/bitcoin/foreign-currency and you buy goods/services/US-dollars the difference in value in USD is considered income. You can't win !!!!! Does anyone else find this absurd? If you buy gold/bitcoin and then the US dollar crashes, even though the prices of goods and services would cost the same amount of gold, it's counted as income!!!! Therefore it's in the interest of the IRS for the dollar to crash so to therefore collect more $$$. Agree or disagree?

If you are stocking up on gold, bitcoins, foreign currencies or whatever in anticipation of the collapse of the U.S. dollar, then the idea is you don't use them until the dollar collapses and the government collection machinery no longer functions. Under that scenario it does not matter what the theoretical tax implications are. It simply matters what you can get away with. If the dollar has so gone to hell that people will be lapping up gold or bitcoins in return for goods and services, the chances are those same people are not going to be filing 1099s with the IRS to report the transaction because they won't want the IRS knowing they now have gold, bitcoins or some other valuable currency.