This might help in understanding the reasoning behind that judgement.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Tax_compliance
TL:DR version - if someone paid you for a service (mowing their lawn) with an exact amount of value (even if it was a beanie baby or Bitcoin worth that amount) depending on your tax situation, you owe taxes on it.
yea, it is pretty interesting the IRS is doing everything they can to get taxes from individuals. They have even recently forced certain exchanges to provide customer documentation. Even though some are fighting it, it is definitely an ongoing issue. I'm not sure what the solution is, but for now nothing is transparent.
I do my best to keep track of my income, no matter what it is and the value it was exchanged at. That is mainly because I run a business and want to make sure there is no way they can get anything on me. lol Better safe than sorry.
I can't disagree with you on that at all. I am still working on a way to keep track of my Crypto profits, but it is definitely more difficult without a single ledger. I hope to find a nice program that will allow interaction between accounts. there is a lot of up and coming programs that help with mining, node, and Masternode setups, but there is still a lot of work to do.