Merchants can't collect evidence required by VAT laws if they use Bitcoin

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vat-supplying-digital-services-and-the-vat-mini-one-stop-shop/vat-supplying-digital-services-and-the-vat-mini-one-stop-shop
  • the billing address of the customer
  • the Internet Protocol (IP) address of the device used by the customer
  • location of the bank
  • the country code of SIM card used by the customer
  • the location of the customer’s fixed land line through which the service is supplied to him
  • other commercially relevant information (for example, product coding information which electronically links the sale to a particular jurisdiction)
Once you have 2 pieces of non-contradictory evidence that is all you need and you don’t need to collect any further supporting evidence.
  1. There is no "billing address" because there is no credit card! Billing address is not associated with Bitcoin.
  2. The IP address is not shown if merchant is selling digital products using TOR hidden service or other protocol, not showing customer's IP address.
  3. There is no bank.
  4. There is no need of using telephone when purchasing digital services. Almost all customers will refuse to give their phone number. Also, the telephone may work without SIM card (e.g. old telephone with cable).
  5. There is no "fixed land line through which the service is supplied" to the customer.
  6. There is no product coding and other bullshit.
So, in fact, the merchant can collect only this information:
1) "Billing address" not verified with credit/debit card or by any other means. Is this evidence?
2) IP address (if merchant is not using TOR hidden service or similar technology). Is this evidence? It is laughable easy for customer to use proxy server or VPN in other country.
3) Customer can give his phone number. But merchant can't verify where this phone number is located. And product will cost more, because there is need to pay for a call center for verifying phone numbers! This will increase the product price with about $1-$5 (this is the price of one phone call). There is no way for merchant to know if customer is using some online phone number.
So, it is most likely that merchant will collect these two evidence:
1) IP address (no way to confirm that no proxy is used).
2) Phone number (no way to confirm phone number has SIM card and not online number).
Is this qualify as "evidence"?

Discussion on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2mlwge/merchants_cant_collect_evidence_required_by_vat/ 

Related: Merchants can't collect evidence required by VAT laws if they use Bitcoin

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Do not use (only) flash memory (SSD drives, hardware wallets, USB flash drives) for your precious private keys!

Image
Flash memory is not a reliable medium for archives. Especially when there is no regular power. I have personal experience with usb flash drive not powered for weeks - one file became corrupted . (Read more here: Archiving private keys - TLDR version. ) You should always back up on paper and other mediums. Flash memory is prone to failure if it is not powered for weeks or more and if there are ionizing radiation When you write your precious private keys you should use technologies like Parchive and ZFS . And make several copies of your files. It's OK if you use your USB flash drive for another backup, but don't rely on it! Always back up on DVDs (even small files!), paper and online (after encryption with CPU and RAM intensive key derivative function like scrypt). Here is example of using the scrypt utility: $ sudo apt-get install scrypt $ scrypt enc -M 1073741824 -t 200 secret.txt encrypted.scrypt Do not use default values of "-M" and "-t", they
Read more

Archiving private keys - TLDR version

0. Make multiple encrypted copies. On DVDs (they are better than CDs and Blu-Ray discs; DVD+R are better than DVD-R), paper, cloud services like DropBox, OneDrive, Google Drive, e-mail it to yourself and to your friends, use P2P storage services like MaidSafe, Storj and Sia , etc. 1. Use proper font when printing PGP encrypted keys on paper. 2. Flash memory (SSD, USB flash drives, hardware wallets) is less reliable when not powered regularly (i.e. every week). 3. Use error correction methods like Parchive and ZFS. 4. Print on paper or store on digital media only encrypted data. 5. Your encryption software should use CPU/RAM-intensive KDF (i.e. scrypt with secure options - do not use defaults! ). First, encrypt with scrypt and then encrypt it again with PGP (using different password!) in ASCII armor mode before print it (other methods like QR codes may not be reliable as multiple copies of the PGP ASCII armor). Do not use the same password for the PGP because it's easy to brute
Read more

[fixed] "Evolution is currently offline due to a network outage."

Evolution is currently offline due to a network outage. Evolution will return to online mode once a network connection is established. If you have this error when updating your system (for example, from Ubuntu 14 to Ubuntu 16), the solution is to run Evolution with this command: evolution --force-online That is usually related to a combination of evolution, dbus, and NetworkManager. With all three installed the idea was that NM would say whether it had a working network or not over dbus. Tools like evolution would ask on dbus about the state of the network and switch to online or offline as networks were hotplugged. This breaks down when the network isn't managed by NM but NM is still running. Such as when /etc/network/interfaces is configured to use ifupdown instead. If NM is running then it won't have any networks under its control and it fails to recognize that the system does actually have a network running outside of its control. It will respond to evolution
Read more

"The Uncensored Hidden Wiki" fake replica!

Image
I found out that there is a fake version of "The Uncensored Hidden Wiki". On the fake version some links are changed with fake websites. I suppose they are trying to steal your login credentials. I compared the "Financial services" pages on both wikis and found out that they changed the URL of the "Hidden Answers". However, the fake replica of "Hidden Answers" don't work at the moment.   Genuine (supposedly): http://gxamjbnu7uknahng.*****/wiki/index.php/Financial_Services Fake: http://uhwiki36pbooodfj.*****/wiki/index.php/Financial_Services   Please note that I do not guarantee which of the above URLs is "genuine" and don't assume that any of them are "safe". Maybe both of them are "fake", I don't know. Here are some examples of differences: Screenshots are from Meld . Visit "The Uncensored Hidden Wiki" or any other *.onion website at your own risk. I do not endorse and do not reco
Read more
[ad removed]