Kyle Lawrence [00:00:08]:
Welcome to Block and Order, the show that explores the legal issues facing the world of web three and beyond. I'm Kyle Lawrence, and with me, as always, he hates paying tax more than all the rest of you. Moish Peltz.

Moish Peltz [00:00:18]:
That's me, Kyle. Just can't stand it.

Kyle Lawrence [00:00:20]:
Just can't stand it at all. Just don't do it. Let's see how that works out.

Moish Peltz [00:00:25]:
You know, when we were in Nashville, there was a flyer circulating which I sent around, which said, you know what? There's actually a way to not pay taxes, ever. All you have to do is follow these seven simple rules and pay me a bunch of money for educational programs.

Kyle Lawrence [00:00:44]:
Was one of them moved to Antarctica or moved?

Matthew Foreman [00:00:46]:
I don't think so.

Moish Peltz [00:00:47]:
I think it was for, you know.

Kyle Lawrence [00:00:49]:
There was a definitely a ubiquitous presence of that at bitcoin 2024 with the, you know, tax is theft and, you know, don't pay tax and all these kinds of things and da da da.

Moish Peltz [00:01:01]:
Well, look, we go back to the roots of bitcoin and, you know, getting away from all the politicians coming into the room saying, here's how we can help you, you know, get back to their roots.

Kyle Lawrence [00:01:11]:
I guess that's what they want. They want to help us. But I'm proud to announce that we have a very special episode for you tonight. We're not going to do our typical point counterpoint episode, which can be found on all podcast platforms, including on YouTube. But no, today we have a tax heavy episode with our very own partner, Mr. Matt Foreman, joining us from far, far away. How you doing, Matt?

Matthew Foreman [00:01:33]:
I'm doing well. How are you doing?

Kyle Lawrence [00:01:36]:
Very well. Very happy to have you here. Very happy to see you. Your smiling face.

Matthew Foreman [00:01:40]:
I wish I had gotten a copy of that flyer because usually the tax protester stuffs are pretty funny. They work about as well as ice skating in July, so at least in.

Kyle Lawrence [00:01:52]:
The northern hemisphere, ice skating in July, the Tampa Bay Lightning won the Stanley Cup. I remember when that happened. Don't, don't.

Moish Peltz [00:01:57]:
Don't throw the Panthers, man. Come on. Don't need to go back that far.

Kyle Lawrence [00:02:00]:
Oh, did that happen? I don't know.

Moish Peltz [00:02:02]:
That just happened.

Kyle Lawrence [00:02:03]:
That's a real team.

Moish Peltz [00:02:03]:
They took the Stanley cup into the Atlantic Ocean, and I was very concerned about, like, corrosion and so forth, but not.

Kyle Lawrence [00:02:09]:
My problem was that this year.

Moish Peltz [00:02:11]:
Yeah, that was this year. That was like last month.

Matthew Foreman [00:02:13]:
That was like a month and a half ago.

Kyle Lawrence [00:02:14]:
Definitely don't cut this out. I need to be shamed online. Come. Come at me in the comments. I deserve that. Sorry. Well, Matt is one of our esteemed tax partners at our law firm, and we love having him. He's one of the co chairs of the firm's tax department, and he is an expert in all things tax, and he loves s corp.

Kyle Lawrence [00:02:33]:
So if you really want to get them going, throw us a comment down below and ask him a question about your favorite s corp question.

Matthew Foreman [00:02:40]:
Yeah, definitely. Love them. Love them.

Kyle Lawrence [00:02:44]:
So Matt is kind enough to join us tonight on a crypto, a crypto tax episode. So we have a couple questions for him. And we're going to have a free flowing dialogue about what you should and should not do in the face of taxes.

Matthew Foreman [00:02:55]:
You should pay your taxes.

Kyle Lawrence [00:02:57]:
You should pay your taxes. We don't give legal advice, but we will tell you that you should pay your taxes.

Moish Peltz [00:03:01]:
I will drop a comment below with a link to the website if you want pursue alternative theories. I think this might be the one time where we're not putting the link in the show notes.

Kyle Lawrence [00:03:14]:
Yeah.

Matthew Foreman [00:03:14]:
I will give you one piece of advice that I give to everyone for free, and it's, it's quoting Jim Carrey in a movie and it's quit breaking the law. And that that is good advice. And I would give legal advice to everyone. That, that is good legal advice.

Moish Peltz [00:03:27]:
All right, so starting off with, with the order today, this is a tax filled order, our first topic. So, Matt, let's start back at the beginning. We're going back to the old days of 2014, right? And the IRS issues a notice, IRS notice 2014-21, which states quite simply that crypto should be taxed as property. So what do you think? Was this right? Was this wrong? Here we are about ten years later. How do we weigh in?

Matthew Foreman [00:03:58]:
So I've had people at the IRS and at the Treasury Department, you know, IRS is part of treasury. But who've told me that before I even answer your question, that they kind of issued that notice and kind of hoped it would go away. Clearly, they were right. It went away. It is no longer an issue and is not something that's ever on the news or anywhere. I actually think they got it right. People get annoyed when I say that. But I'll explain to you why.

Matthew Foreman [00:04:25]:
So I'm not saying that it's not currency. I'm not saying it's property. I'm not saying it's anything. I'm saying for tax, you have to characterize it some way. There's something you have to do. And they had to sort of look at it, and there's really two ways it can be done. You know, people say, oh, it should be taxed like the us dollar. And the answer is, there is one thing in the world that is taxed like the us dollar, and that's the us dollar in the United States of America.

Matthew Foreman [00:04:49]:
Okay? Currencies, the euro, the pound, the canadian dollar are taxed completely differently. Completely differently. And there's two basic principles that underpin it. One is there's a de minimis rule, which is basically, if you make or lose $500 in a year, you don't have to declare that income. And there's a demand, as people say, they want it for cryptocurrency. The way I think about it, the way it was taught to me, was that that was done. So you go on vacation, exchange your money, make some money, lose some money on currency exchange, and come back. That's the price, $500, even though it has not been indexed to inflation and it's existed.

Kyle Lawrence [00:05:27]:
I was gonna ask if that had gone up, but no, no.

Matthew Foreman [00:05:30]:
One of the many beautiful areas in the internal revenue code, they're just not indexed to inflation like the 1099 thresholds. Comically stupid. But anyway, the issue is that currencies are taxed in a way where you cannot get capital gains. They are ordinary income taxed at the highest mark, not the highest margin rate, but whatever your rate bracket is. So what I always tell people is, and I say this all the time, is be careful what you wish, or you just might get it. If there should be tax like currency, then that's fine. But then it's ordinary income, however, bitcoin, right? Unless you're a trader, unless you're a dealer, you're getting capital gains, right. Maximum rate is 23.8% or near income.

Matthew Foreman [00:06:08]:
Maximum rate is 37%. Do you want to pay more taxes? The only way that you will pay less taxes if it were taxed as a currency is if you live in Washington state, which only taxes capital gains and does not tax ordinary income. Don't ask why. Not getting into it. But that's something they decided to do. Tennessee did it for a while.

Kyle Lawrence [00:06:28]:
Forget why. How is that even forget it?

Matthew Foreman [00:06:31]:
I don't think it is. And they said it with federal ordinary income on that. Yes, they would, but it depends where the break brackets end up. You can actually, states tend to be fairly flat. Most states hit their peak around 100,000, and then, like New York, for example, it kicks up again around over a million. So it could actually be at a point where the state taxes could be enough to deal with the thing. So it doesn't. So in general, right, in Washington state has a lot of people, but it's not like 50% of the population of the US.

Matthew Foreman [00:06:57]:
If you live in New York, if you live in California, if you live in Florida or Texas, right. No state taxes. You want capital gains. You really want it in Florida, Texas, right. At anywhere where there's no state taxes. So that is something that you really need to think about, is that it can be a currency, but how things are characterized for income tax purposes really does not match what it is otherwise. And I know both of you in your practice, we have that where I'll answer a question, they'll be like, well, that doesn't really make sense. And I'm like, yeah, man, it's just tax law.

Kyle Lawrence [00:07:26]:
I don't know, I'm just the messenger. Don't shoot me.

Matthew Foreman [00:07:32]:
A small town girl living in a lonely world.

Moish Peltz [00:07:37]:
Well, it does feel like, though, it kind of has the, I mean, I get it, right? So the highest capital gains rate is lower than like most of the ordinary income rates. So from that perspective, it's preferential. But it does seem like you're fundamentally treating it as property, where every time you move this thing, which is this thing that moves really quickly and really fast and autonomously and through different systems and different currencies constantly, all the time, millions of transactions, it just fundamentally requires you to then calculate a basis and a gain for all of these millions of or whatever transactions, which seems like, well, that's just fundamentally, okay, that's how it's been for ten years. We're going to write some new laws. Those new laws are probably going to kind of continue forward from that framework of, well, it's been property for ten years, it's probably should still be property. But it seems like that's still kind of just like not right, because it's, it just seems like it's something new that shouldn't just be shoehorned into like essentially the oldest form of ownership rights, which are property, and maybe we can have a new way to tax these things.

Kyle Lawrence [00:08:46]:
Sounds like securities laws.

Matthew Foreman [00:08:49]:
I think we need to get the SEC involved. They're great about things, so they're really great about this stuff. So you make valid arguments. And I absolutely see your point. And I'll make one comment is there's a whole thing when people talk about, you know, oh, you know, my dad used to get paid in apples or they'd bring this in. And I always point out that if you get paid in apples like that's cool. But it's still taxable income. You don't actually have to use the value of the property.

Matthew Foreman [00:09:13]:
Right. And what your point is, if you want to go bitcoin, you know, to doge, to eth, to the thousands of, I'll say meme coins, I'll avoid swearing on this, but millions, but the quadrillions of them. Right. Thousands is not even in the ballpark. You go between one and the other. The issue is, the way that it's characterized for tax is it goes, it pretends and tax always interposes and creates extra steps that don't really happen in order to sort of create a flow. And the idea is that it goes bitcoin to dollar, then back up to doge. That's how it views it.

Matthew Foreman [00:09:46]:
And that's how it would be if I traded a baseball card for a bobblehead. Right? Same idea. It's just that it's property for property and that's how it's taxed. And so they sort of looked at it and said, well, you know, that the one area where currency could be better, right, or there's other ways. And people say, well, what if we keep it in this? Or what if I keep it in the same wallet, right. It just holds different types of tokens, different types of whatever. And there's a sort of a point where, like, what is the underlying asset, right. Because you can get nfts that have real estate, right.

Matthew Foreman [00:10:18]:
And theoretically, could you change, you know, this NFT for that NFT. And you're like, well, the underlying character, and then you're piercing the veil. Right. Character. And there's a real question as to whether, like, that's even appropriate, whether that's mechanically done. And I think the problem that comes up, and this has always fascinated me, and people get something I've always say is, is that at its core, cryptocurrency and blockchain is an accounting mechanism. It accounts for who owns what accounts for ownership. It's title, et cetera, et cetera.

Moish Peltz [00:10:42]:
It's a ledger, right?

Matthew Foreman [00:10:43]:
Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's general ledger. Right. The same idea. And yet it seems to actually not be something that can do that. Right? And the number. There's so many startups and so many fairly mature companies that are trying to do just that. They're trying to allow you to track it easily.

Matthew Foreman [00:10:57]:
And they do a, I'll say not great job right now, there's no product that I would characterize as good, which I'll probably get hate mail for, but that's cool. That's fine. And my point is that I think that the underlying issue is that a lot of people don't. They say, look, the accounting is really hard, so we need to create an easier rule. And so the counter argument to that, that the IRS said is that at our core we're just trying to make you account for what happened. Right. And people say, oh, what about a de minimis rule? I'm like, you still have to account for it to see if you meet the de minimis threshold. Right.

Matthew Foreman [00:11:26]:
So it doesn't really lower the thing. And so my answer is I actually think property is right because I don't think it's a currency in the tax context. Is it a currency in an economic context? Yeah, I mean, I think there's certain coins, yes. Certain coins. Absolutely not. And it depends. It depends, right. I'm a lawyer.

Matthew Foreman [00:11:42]:
I have to say depends. It's, it's in the rule somewhere. And, but I think the answer is, I actually think property is the right characteristic. Characteristic. But I think there need to be better rules dealing with how to account for what is the right way to do it. And I think rules sort of similar to, I know we're not there. We're going to get there and we're not really going to talk about like the broker regs, part of what the broker regs did, where they said, okay, here's what we want in 1099 DA, right. This is what's going to be in it.

Matthew Foreman [00:12:07]:
And I think they need to dictate a way for a form to allow for easier accounting. And once you have the, this is what we want, right. Whether it's Congress, treasury, the IRS, whomever, right. I really don't care who. I think you need to create rules. And I think part of this is, and I'm jumping into the next question is like, what should Congress do? And I think we need help. I think there needs to be something there and they need to do something because right now they're just, they're circling around each other and they're just kind of yelling at each other and it's not helpful.

Kyle Lawrence [00:12:35]:
Well, they're yelling at each other and now you're seeing, I mean, that's a great segue into the next topic you're seeing in Washington, this sort of sea change of where it used to be very anti crypto and just against these assets. The people who were running for president were adamantly against them. And now you have a complete 180 on these fronts from both sides of the aisle. So it's an election year. We're not going to kid ourselves and think that anything meaningful, if anything, is going to happen between now and the end of the year. But going into 2025, what do you think as somebody with your expertise and somebody really understands, one, these assets and two, how they're taxed at the federal and state level, what should Congress do and, and why aren't they doing anything other than the reasons that we've already alluded to?

Matthew Foreman [00:13:19]:
First off, I think there's a material chance that there could be significant laws passed after the second Tuesday, November until like the, whatever, whenever the new Congress comes in.

Kyle Lawrence [00:13:31]:
By the outgoing administration.

Matthew Foreman [00:13:32]:
Yeah, not as much with the administration. I actually think for the most part, I think if you can get the House. Senate, I think you can get 60 in the Senate, but you can get the House to agree on anything other than the fact that they're way cooler than the Senate, I think that you would actually have a pretty good chance of doing something. And I think if you got 40 or so people in Congress who are on their way out. Right. And there's already been a couple dominoes have fallen with election prime, you know, with party primaries, that I think they could be persuaded to do something in the middle. Right. And I actually do think the consensus between the left and the right, sort of ignoring the more extremes on both sides, are actually not that far apart. They're actually can, I think they can get there and I think they can get there on material issues.

Matthew Foreman [00:14:16]:
Right. But they seem to be disinclined to because I'm not going to rant about Congress and politicians, but it's an issue. And I think Congress needs to say, look, like this is what it is. Right. In terms of, I know a lot of people who are going to watch us listen to this, are nothing lawyers and this one to do, but it's laws, it's regulations, it's IRS guidance. It's IRS guidance. It's notices. They're like fifth tier down.

Matthew Foreman [00:14:44]:
They're not even, you don't notice it. So this is just the, IRS saying, this is what we think and you have to tell us why we're wrong. And I don't think there's any authority out there that can say why they're wrong. So I think Congress has to step in and Congress just doesn't want to. I don't think either administration is actually strong enough and cares enough either way. So I don't think dependent on who wins. I think it's more a matter of getting enough people in Congress who are interested in actually doing it. I think that's the bigger problem because I actually, again, I don't think either party is actually that far apart.

Matthew Foreman [00:15:15]:
I really, really don't. And you see it with Gillibrand and Lummis. Thank you. You know, they don't agree on a whole lot, but all of a sudden they came out together and you're like, yeah, like, I mean, I don't agree with that. I agree with that. I agree with. But, like, these are people who don't, you know, strange bedfellows for sure.

Kyle Lawrence [00:15:32]:
Right.

Moish Peltz [00:15:33]:
Well, so one of the questions we, we've pondered on the show is, well, is now, I mean, not now because nothing's happening, I don't think, between now and January. But, but, but now being the, let's say, January February kind of new Congress time, is, is that the time to get something done or is it kind of better to continue, let the court process play out and get some more, like, judgments and appellate doctrine and so forth? And I think that argument we've kind of gone through on the securities and regulatory enforcement side. And I'm curious what you think about that on the tax side, because it does seem like it kind of is a mess on the tax side, and maybe some guidance and some clarity and some legislation could help improve things, maybe not improve them all the way, but, but make them better than where we are now. And I'm curious how you see that as part of the legislative role. Like, well, from an industry perspective, do you actually want, like, mediocre legislation that'll, that'll fix some but not all these problems?

Matthew Foreman [00:16:41]:
I don't want mediocre legislation, but given the last five large tax bills, you know, spanning from TCJA, you know, I don't have terribly high expectations because I think a lot of it gets rushed and isn't done right. And I think this is gonna get jammed into some other bill or an appropriations bill or something like that, which I don't want. Right. Because I don't think this is a tax issue at all. I think you want, as someone in an industry, you want them to sit down and work through just this problem and vote on these problems and have real discussions. They're just, they're just not. And I think I'm gonna kind of go into the next point about Lopebright and, and then the Chevron deference. I think Congress needs to act.

Matthew Foreman [00:17:17]:
I think Congress has abdicated its authority in ways that are extremely frustrated. Right. Even people on either side of it who disagree with me on points or agree with me on points are very frustrated with Congress congressional inaction. It's unacceptable and it's frustrating. The positive is, and I'm going to make a really interesting comment, that all.

Kyle Lawrence [00:17:39]:
Of your comments are interesting, just for the record. Right.

Matthew Foreman [00:17:42]:
This one is before, you know, you said this is counterintuitive about say, but.

Kyle Lawrence [00:17:46]:
Delete the rest of the episode.

Matthew Foreman [00:17:47]:
So for those who are not lawyers but who follow the news somewhat, right. Something called Chevron deference ended under a case called Loper Bright, right. Name of the plaintiff, Chevron deference said that treasury regulations that even if Congress, Congress. So laws can say treasury will fill in this part. Right. Treasury is the regulatory agency. They follow APA, administrative Procedure act. They do it right.

Matthew Foreman [00:18:11]:
Whether they do it right. Whatever. Not the point here. And they issue regulations and then they get deference, which means you basically have to prove that the regulations exceeded, like, just make no sense. Basically, I'm way flubbing it. But like, that's the, that's the idea for layperson, if you know what I'm talking about. Like, just pretend I'm right. And what happened was with Loper Bright, Chevron deference gets ended.

Matthew Foreman [00:18:32]:
Right? Which means that the only time regulations get ended, if get any sort of deference, get any sort of preference, are viewed as correct, sort of by default, is if Congress explicitly says, in case tax, treasury can regulate in this area, which is extremely rare, there's, there's maybe a hundred times in the tax code, which is extremely long, that it says it. And they're in there. They tend to be very narrow. Right. Very narrow. And sometimes it's just like the treasury can, can give examples, which really doesn't do a whole lot. I mean, it's helpful, but whatever.

Matthew Foreman [00:19:02]:
What's going on right now is the IRS is an influx of money, which is a good thing. Which is a good thing. And it is because if you ever called the IRS, you know that the IRS not having money is extremely frustrating because no one answers right. No one's answering very much. So. It's sort of like calling me, don't answer the phone. But if you want to read the.

Moish Peltz [00:19:20]:
IRS ringtone, you can listen to podcast. Yeah.

Matthew Foreman [00:19:23]:
If you want to hear. If you want to hear the on hold, first off, you can call. You'll hear it anyway. But if you want to hear it without actually getting really annoyed and being able to hang up when you don't do anything, my podcast, we thank you. Moish we licensed the actual music from it, which is just, it's phenomenal. But anyway, that's my point. So the end of it, what's going to happen is the treasury doesn't have the funding the IRS has, and if there's no meaningful preference, meaning that the treasury regulations aren't given deference, aren't viewed more highly than just the IRS issuing lower guidance, the IRS, which has more budget to do this right now, is actually better equipped to start pushing out specific points. Right.

Matthew Foreman [00:19:59]:
You didn't do anything on liquidity pools. Cool. Here's some guidance on liquidity pools. Here's at least a framework, here's specific issues. Here's where we think things are problematic. The Chevron deference is over, the sky is falling, people are going to send nuclear weapons at each other. Probably not, but in the context attacks, it could be good because it'll give you more idea of what sometimes the problem is you don't know what the IRS is thinking. Sometimes just knowing what they're thinking.

Matthew Foreman [00:20:24]:
That being said, when the IRS is saying is going to push out stuff like notice 2014-21 is not saying, they're saying, we think this is the answer. If you disagree, you can litigate it. It's kind of a toss up, but you have to explain why we're wrong. We explain why you're wrong and we'll figure it out. And I actually think that's a really good, really good thing for it. The fact that they can just push out, get things out more quickly. Treasury regulations take forever. There's a huge process.

Matthew Foreman [00:20:47]:
APA requires hearings, it requires this or that. And by eliminating that, you may get more uneven guidance, but you'll get more information, you'll get what they're doing. And one thing I will say about the broker regs, I know I said I didn't want to talk about it because you really have to go in detail, is they actually read the comments, they actually read it and they pulled back in areas and they pushed ahead in areas people didn't like. But what was obvious to me is that they do listen to what you say. And even when people complain about IRS stuff, there's a phone number and an email address, usually at least a phone number after every IRS notice. If you have questions, contact this person. They answer the phone. I don't know if the person who wrote 20 114 20 2014-21 is still there, but if they're there, you can literally pick up the phone and call them and they will call you back in a couple of days.

Matthew Foreman [00:21:30]:
I mean, if they're on vacation or whatever, that's great.

Moish Peltz [00:21:32]:
That's different than we've seen happen in other government agencies that are regulating crypto in the US.

Matthew Foreman [00:21:40]:
The SEC is not so friendly in that way, right?

Kyle Lawrence [00:21:42]:
Correct.

Moish Peltz [00:21:43]:
But I guess, I guess the counterpoint to that would be, well, if you see these broker regs coming, and this isn't a, I don't think this is necessarily an area where treasury or IRS has been given explicit preference to regulate this area, then in the wake of Loper, why not just say, I don't care what you're saying, and I'm going to just go this way because I think that's more reasonable and come litigate, I guess, except you don't want to litigate against IRS, I assume. You know, why should we even accept any of these regulatory frameworks if they're not in areas where they're entitled to regulate?

Matthew Foreman [00:22:26]:
I don't have an answer, to be honest. Tax attorneys tend to be rule followers. We like to push the boundaries a lot and we like to push them as far as they go, but generally we're rule followers. And the way that when people say, well, I'm just not going to follow it is going to do is that I'm going to butcher it, but mess around and find out. Because in this area, I always say, look, the IRS using chain analysis. They know more of what's going on than people think, or maybe they don't, but I don't know how much they're connecting. But if you're already on the radar for something and they're just waiting for you to not do it, then they're going to do it. And the really big ones they're going to go after is not going to be the IRS, the Treasury Department prosecuting.

Matthew Foreman [00:23:11]:
It's going to go straight. Department of justice. Right. And that's something they have the authority to do. And that's a different question than, you know, is staking taxable upon receipt that those are just totally different things and the broker regs are a more fundamental one. I also, for what it's worth, do not think that a lot of these broker regulations were necessary. I think that existing regulations actually largely applied to a lot of the context and situations. I think what they're trying to do, which is what I want Congress to do, is give explicit, direct, specific examples.

Matthew Foreman [00:23:42]:
And I actually think that's where it's most helpful. So the question is whether in a lot of ways. And Moish, we've had this conversation. Whether you agree with it. Right. That's a different question than whether they should. Should Congress be doing it? Yes. Should the IRS be doing it? Yes.

Matthew Foreman [00:23:54]:
Should treasury be doing it? Yes. The question is, who's the right one to do it? The answer is, I'm going back. Congress. Congress. Congress, Congress the first five times. And their inaction has led to collateral issues.

Kyle Lawrence [00:24:06]:
That's right. And part of the issue that we've talked about on the show numerous times, and we've brought up Chevron deference and we talked about the IRS trying to find, you know, neerdowells in the space. And what I'm afraid of is, you know, I remember back in the days of, you know, after Enron happened and Sarbanes Oxley came out and it's like, all right, well, we have the right idea. It's like the wrong thing, but for the right reason. It's like we have to protect against these things. So let's have this sweeping legislation that no one is going to read and it's going to make it now cost prohibitive to become a public company, and then nobody goes public anymore. And I'm afraid, as I think a lot of us are, is that, yes, Congress needs to pass regulation. Everybody agrees on that.

Kyle Lawrence [00:24:44]:
But what they should not do is over correct the problem and make it so burdensome and so overwrought and so impossible to follow that nobody can do anything. And, you know, who knows? I mean, maybe Congress can get their act together and the people who are coming in are just becoming more and more learned about this space as time goes on. I think that's a little optimistic, but I don't know, I just. I shudder to think of what it's going to look like, to be honest.

Matthew Foreman [00:25:12]:
I worry about letting judges do it. I think it's a job of legislators who have staffs.

Kyle Lawrence [00:25:19]:
I don't disagree with that.

Matthew Foreman [00:25:20]:
And I think judges just don't have the resources to properly educate themselves about the underlying technology, about the transaction, about tax law. Most judges have never dealt with tax before. Most federal judges, that's what you're gonna deal with. Right. And that's. That's a problem. And they've never dealt with a lot of areas of law, and that's hard. That's.

Matthew Foreman [00:25:38]:
Being a judge is a deceptively challenging job. I mean, most lawyers kind of aware of, like, how crazy it is. People like, oh, you just kind of learn every area of law. And I'm like, I don't know anything. You know, I struggle to keep up with, you know, keep up with tax law. Like, I can't imagine learning, you know, every title the United States coded and having to explain it. Right. So I think that.

Matthew Foreman [00:25:57]:
I think Congress has to do something, and I don't know what the answer is and I don't know what the right one is. But I think your point about, you know, you don't want to bring out the sledgehammer when you need a small hammer, you know? You know, when, when.

Kyle Lawrence [00:26:08]:
Right.

Matthew Foreman [00:26:09]:
That's it. And that's. And you're right, and I think that's a problem. I think the regulations were a sledgehammer of sorts, but I think when they, they came back, they used more sledgehammers, but smaller ones, but they still went pretty hard because I think they view it probably correctly as there's some real problem areas here. But I think the issue is they needed something out there to use it to then go after the people who aren't doing things right and aren't following what should be done. And I think the good actors are gonna severely, significantly see their expenses go up and then their compliance costs. And I don't think that's good, no its fair though yeah. And I don't know that, you know, again, I say this repeatedly.

Matthew Foreman [00:26:45]:
I don't know what the solution is, but I don't think relying on a regulatory state is the solution. And I think, again, I'm biased, so it doesn't work. So, you know, I think it could be good. I think you could get more guidance coming out from the IRS rather than just treasury. But I think we really think we need Congress to act. I say it a thousand times, and I'm a broken record, but I'll keep, I'll keep saying it.

Moish Peltz [00:27:10]:
All right, so, Matt, we've been talking about, you know, some, some aggressive positions we could be taking in crypto. Um, and I'm wondering about a specific one, which is about wash sales. And I hear a lot of different opinions about, you know, wash sale rule being, you know, I own, I own some crypto. It's, you know, say, down 25% or 90%, as cryptos often tend to do. Why don't I just immediately sell it, uh, and then buy it back, and then therefore take the loss, then net that loss off against any other gains I get, and I can just immediately rebuy that same crypto and generate basically a fake loss for tax purposes. So I hear a lot of people saying, like, there's no rule that says, I can't do that. Why not? Just do it? And I feel like you may have a caution sign for us.

Matthew Foreman [00:27:59]:
So I will tell you that there is only really one context in internal revenue code where wash sales are specifically not allowed. It's in the context of security. So stocks and bonds, basically. Other things that fall into every crypto. Yeah, right, right. So, so basically what those are is you have to sell it and then not hold it for a period of time before you can rebuy it. Otherwise there's a wash sale. And what the wash sale is, is basically it pretends you never sold it.

Matthew Foreman [00:28:29]:
So the gain or the loss just gets. Well, to be the loss, because if it's gain, it's irrelevant. You can actually have wash gain. You recognize the gain, but the wash sale loss doesn't work. And what happens is it just defers the loss again. It just kind of keeps it going and what you want to. And people say, well, it doesn't say I can't, so therefore I can. And there's a very famous case, Gregory v.

Matthew Foreman [00:28:50]:
Helvering. Guy T Helvering was the, what is now the secretary of the treasury. No, I got that wrong. He's commissioner, internal revenue. So there's a lot of cases with Helvering. So that, this is Gregory, I was.

Kyle Lawrence [00:29:01]:
Like, the name sounds familiar. Why is that? Nike?

Matthew Foreman [00:29:03]:
You've heard a few. Yeah. If you have read any tax case for about a 15 year period, he was it, and he was also it in the thirties and the forties, when there was a lot of litigation, when the tax rates were a lot higher, misses Gregory did some structuring that just didn't work right. And there's this wonderful phrase, and I'm going to misquote it because I never bothered to learn it from, from judge, learned hand. Whose actual first name was Billings, I think. But what he said is, you know, there's no constitutional duty to pay more taxes than you're obligated to pay, which is true. But that dicta, because misses Gregory lost and she paid penalties. And what the actual part of the case is, but this is not that.

Matthew Foreman [00:29:38]:
You can't structure a transaction to manufacturing that's false. So Moish, you said false loss, right? If you say this is a false loss, but I'm going to take it. Well, no, then you need to be able to take it. Otherwise, the reason she, the reason that you wouldn't be able to do it. And the counter argument is what's called the economic substance doctrine, which is codified. It's actually law 7701 O, I think, I think 99% sure.

Matthew Foreman [00:29:58]:
And what it basically says in this context is from an economic perspective, you didn't actually sell it. There is no real risk here. The economic is that you sold it and you bought it. Right. And I've had people say, well, you just wait five minutes. And from a non tax perspective, that's a heck of a position, which is if your asset in five minutes could drop enough that it's worth it, do you want to buy that asset? Which is sort of the point about the many, I'll say, less successful tokens and coins that existed. But on the flip side, what if you're doing it right? And so people are like, well, how long do I have to wait? I'm like, look, if you were to wait 30 days, right, which is roughly the rules a little different than that. But I'll just say it's 30 days, which is a rule for securities, I think you're fine.

Matthew Foreman [00:30:44]:
But 30 days is kind of a long time, especially in an asset as volatile as most of these are. So do you need to wait that long? No, but don't sell it. Wait five minutes and buy it. Right. That's just, that's bonkers. That's just way too fast in my view. So it doesn't say you can't, but the economic substance doctrine, which absolutely exists, doesn't do it. There's also from another perspective, some people say, well, what about the step transaction doctrine? Step transaction doctrine, very similar concept.

Matthew Foreman [00:31:10]:
But it's basically if you wouldn't do every single step, right, you can't manufacture. And this is what misses Gregory did wrong. She took all these steps to get to an endpoint, right. And by using all these technical steps, you got to an endpoint and you can't do that. You can't use 17 steps to get to one where you can get there in one. And by doing these 17, you get a different result. It sort of collapses it, right? If you wouldn't do all of them at the start, then you wouldn't do any of it. And it should really just be ignored or recharacterized.

Matthew Foreman [00:31:36]:
And that's the issue, right? So people say, well, I do them and I take them and that's it. And I'm like, okay, you know, yes, but you could get audited. And if you get audited, they're going to do it. Is the IRS watching trades that closely? Heavens, no they don't have the resources to do it. And I don't think our AI is anywhere near what good enough to do it. And frankly, I've dealt with fairly active, some active trader clients, former clients and former clients. And man, there are people who are doing a lot of trades. So you have to be pretty high for them to really get up that number.

Matthew Foreman [00:32:07]:
If you're doing two trades a day, right, and you're doing a couple watch sales, they're not paying attention to you. I don't mean to sound rude, I would love to. Views are important. Although maybe we want to be not important to the IRS. And I think that's what we're looking for. So people say, you know the question, right, okay, but what about watch sales? It doesn't say it can't. And there's a rule for securities, so I can, and the answer is you can. You know, it's the old trading adage, bulls and bears, you know, make money, pigs get slaughtered.

Matthew Foreman [00:32:34]:
Don't be a pig. Make a rule and do that. And I think that's, that's what's important to me.

Kyle Lawrence [00:32:39]:
I mean in my, from where I sit, you know, wash trading is a very common thing in the securities markets because people are doing it to, you know, create the illusion of action or price action which drives the price up. And that's when people want to capitalize on it. So it's kind of interesting to think of a scenario where someone is doing this in order to juice the price. And when the IRS catches them and things them on every trade that they made and then the SEC catches them for wash trading. It's like one of those things. It's like, it's like counting cards in the casino. It's like, it's not technically illegal, but they don't let you do it and they throw you out. It just reminds me of that right.

Kyle Lawrence [00:33:14]:
Why I'm not doing anything illegal even though I have this like the thing on my leg, the buzzer bring in mister happy and he hits it with the cattle prod. But that's, you know, but that's what I think about wash training. It's just amusing to think that, that there is no hard and fast rule about these things, even though it's, to me, it's a smell test kind of thing where there's smoke there's fire. If you have to ask, then you shouldn't do it. And that's the kind of thing that, hey, should I be doing this? I'm trying to juice the price. Probably not. It's like you don't need a law degree to know which way the wind blows.

Matthew Foreman [00:33:49]:
To that point, I had a conversation with someone who was a trader at a bank, and when he sort of surmised was there were periods where they were probably selling the stock to themselves. Different traders taking different positions, definitely. And in crypto, my lord, that can happen. That really can happen. Right. And you can probably do it yourself. So you can, you can goose it in ways, because, look, the SEC watches what's going on a little more than, you know, anyone, whomever the regulatory agency should be in any country on this stuff. I don't know, and I have no opinion on that.

Matthew Foreman [00:34:20]:
Believe me, I've none. But, you know, it's hard to figure out. And I always say, like, well, then I just do a wash sale. And I'm just like, yeah, I don't think taxes are your real concern, you know.

Kyle Lawrence [00:34:31]:
Right. That's the least of your problems. Like, getting the IRS audit would be welcome. Not even somebody to talk to.

Matthew Foreman [00:34:39]:
It's like, don't worry, I was, I was only trying to pump up the value of this in order to sell it to some bunch of suckers. You know, Ben Affleck's gonna star, stars me in the movie, or Leonardo DiCaprio, whichever one you want it to be. Right.

Moish Peltz [00:34:56]:
Zach Galifianakis. The figures moving around.

Matthew Foreman [00:34:58]:
Yeah, I love that GIF, love that one. Do we say GIF or JIF?

Moish Peltz [00:35:03]:
Kind of dancing around it, but GIF, you know, it's GIF. Okay, so one of the things you mentioned was, you know, don't do this. Or you could get audited, which, you know, we've been involved now in quite a few instances where people have been audited, including for significant cryptocurrency activity. And I'm wondering, just based on your experiences, how should people think about, not just at the point of audit, but at the point of preparing and declaring and organizing and keeping records, how should people prepare for being successful and surviving an IRS auditor, whether they're casual trader, perhaps someone that's more active, perhaps more of a enterprise or a, you know, crypto institution. You know, how should they think about that question?

Matthew Foreman [00:35:55]:
So, first off, my first piece of advice for everyone is keep the best records you can and file your return on time. People are like, well, if I don't file my return, they'll never find me. And I can tell you, I've defended those audits. Yeah, they, some of them actually go pretty well, if you can get the data and the information. Some of them go about as well as a young child trying to get a young child to put on their shoes when they want to watch tv. Okay. And perhaps not as well. And the IRS, and I don't totally blame them for not being thrilled when you tell them I have no records.

Matthew Foreman [00:36:31]:
I don't know. But I made $142. Right. That's just, that's not an answer. And there's a case.

Moish Peltz [00:36:38]:
You figure it out.

Matthew Foreman [00:36:39]:
Yeah, you got all my information. And I will tell you that this is a situation where they do have all the information. I've gotten IDR information, document requests, which is how the IRS has information in formal audit, where they include the person's trading records. They said, please explain these trades. And you're just like, oh, oh. And they're tracing it between different platforms. They're tracing it between wallets. And that's when I realized, like, the IRS pretty good at this.

Matthew Foreman [00:37:12]:
They really have spent money on it and they've spent time. And they have people who are good at it. So file your return, get it done. Get it done. Right, right. Keeping accurate and contemporaneous books and records. Right. At the same time you're doing it.

Matthew Foreman [00:37:24]:
Put it in excel. Right. I bought it at 40, I sold it at 41. I bought it on this date. This is the quantity. I know it sounds annoying, but if you're the kind of person who does two trades a day, that's not a lot of work. Just do it, stick it in excel and move on. Your actual records that you might be able to download two and a half, three years later are not going to be as good.

Matthew Foreman [00:37:44]:
But if you say, look, here it is, here's an excel, they're going to look at what they have. They're seeing, it matches up. They don't, you know, I say this quite often. They don't want this smoke, man. They want to agree with you. They want to get it right because they don't want to deal with a headache audit. It's just human nature. Right? So go in, have the records, right.

Matthew Foreman [00:38:00]:
And that's important, what to do if you don't, right. You know, get someone to go in. I've had people who've hired, you know, there are small accountants who do it, bookkeepers, things like that. I've had clients who've hired big four accounting firms because they had 15,000 trades a year for three years and that you just needed people to go through it. Right. To go through and trace it all out and sit there and do it. So you need seven people to do it. And they spent probably more money than they would have.

Matthew Foreman [00:38:27]:
Right. If you're doing 15,000 trades a year. That's a whole other issue for another day. But the key is records. There's a great, there's a case involving George M. Cohan, if you broadway, he did a lot of songs that you've heard, right. And you don't know, you know them, but you know them even if you're not abroad, you know these songs. Right.

Matthew Foreman [00:38:43]:
And there's a case he did, and it deals with substantiation. How much proof you need in order to do it? And that's the key. How much do you need? And the answer is you have to compel, give a compelling story and compelling narrative that this is the answer and the documents to back it up. Proof to back it up. And I've done enough where the documents were atrocious and I've done enough where the documents were mediocre. And they're actually pretty okay with mediocre documentation. The question is, does it, does it make sense for the person, you know, does it make sense for what they're doing? You know, if someone has no source of income, no assets, and they're driving around a Maserati, but they're not making income. Right.

Matthew Foreman [00:39:19]:
On cryptocurrency trading, they're going to ask you what's going on. Right. And that's not a, I don't think you have to be a genius or tax person or a lawyer or anything to think, well, that doesn't make sense. Right. So either they're a bookie or they're doing something else. Right. And so that's the issue that you have do, and illegal income is still income anyway. So you have to do it.

Matthew Foreman [00:39:36]:
So the key is to do it. The big issue that I see an audit is what's called, is basically the methodology for determining gains and losses. Right. And there's really two that are commonly used. You could, there's a thousand you can use in a business and you have to have a reason for do it. There's LIFO and FIFO. FIFO is first in, first out. So the first one you bought gets sold.

Matthew Foreman [00:39:58]:
And LIFO is the most recent one. Last and first out. The most recent one you bought gets sold. That's how it is. That's a methodology. You can just use it. It's fine. They don't love LIFO.

Matthew Foreman [00:40:07]:
They probably prefer FIFO. Maybe they like FIFO. There's a thought goes back and forth, by the way, this is something that Congress should do. Congress should tell you what to do. There's one that people use called HIFO and HIFO doesn't exist, okay? It does not exist. It's fictional, and there's no context which is allowed. And people say, but you can do it. I'm like, yes, you can do it.

Matthew Foreman [00:40:23]:
Here's how HIFO is. Highest in, first out. Highest in, first out means one thing. You will always have the smallest gain or largest loss every single time. Every single time, no matter what. That's the answer. And it does not exist because it will always produce the smallest gain or largest loss. Right? It will always do that.

Matthew Foreman [00:40:40]:
And it's not just pick one and see what happens. What people do when they want to do HIFO is what's called specific identification. That's allowed statutorily for securities, and there's case law on it and how to do it. So if you can say, I bought this lot of 30 tokens on this date, and then on this date I sold these 30, even though I've bought and sold the same types in between. But I can show that it's this one. That's fine. That's allowed. And you can do that.

Matthew Foreman [00:41:11]:
I know people who do that. Right? It's only occasional traders. You can get with a big people, a lot of stuff. It can be a little harder. And by doing that, that's how you do it. And there are pieces of software that say, do you want to use HIFO? And people pay for it, and they go in with the audit and, pardon my language, they get smoked every time. They get absolutely crushed. And they, you know, I've had one person came back and they won't let me use HIFO.

Matthew Foreman [00:41:34]:
And I'm like, well, yeah, because it's not a methodology. Well, it's not. I guess it is methodology. It's not an accepted methodology, and I don't blame them for that one.

Moish Peltz [00:41:42]:
So devil's advocate on that one. I presume it's technologically possible. And I'm sure there are platforms out there that say, okay, I'm spinning up a new wallet and we're doing these trades in this wallet. And then I can kind of, it's kind of mechanically creating a lot because there is no broker. You're just having a wallet or certain fungible tokens in a certain bucket. And I imagine a system that could be designed like that.

Matthew Foreman [00:42:12]:
Absolutely. So the case law around securities being sold, first off, they're all from like the fifties and the sixties. So, you know, the data is a little fuzzier. But what it is is if someone calls up their broker, right? And I like this as a phone, right? You know, millennial. I can do that. So he. What you do?

Kyle Lawrence [00:42:31]:
Wait, are you.

Matthew Foreman [00:42:32]:
I sneak in.

Kyle Lawrence [00:42:33]:
Sorry, I'm confused about all that stuff. Millennial. Gen X. I. You're a millennial.

Matthew Foreman [00:42:38]:
It's Reagan. My understanding.

Kyle Lawrence [00:42:42]:
I'm actually Jimmy Carter, if you can believe that.

Matthew Foreman [00:42:44]:
Wow, you're. You were born in the 14 hundreds. That's crazy.

Kyle Lawrence [00:42:48]:
I'm Gen. Am I X. All right, sorry. Go ahead. I'm sorry.

Matthew Foreman [00:42:54]:
Yeah, sorry, man. Sorry.

Kyle Lawrence [00:42:55]:
Confusing.

Matthew Foreman [00:42:56]:
Anyway, um, so, yeah, Reagan. Um, so he.

Moish Peltz [00:43:00]:
So.

Matthew Foreman [00:43:01]:
So what it is, they call up their broker, right? And they say, okay, you know that 400 shares of Eastern Airline stock that I bought? I want you to sell that 400, but not the 100 I bought two weeks ago. I want you to sell that 400. And that that is sufficient to sell the broker. Even if there are cases where the broker did not sell the correct lots, if you hold them that and they have the thing that they meant to do it, they can account for it that way because. Because they're fungible. Right. Bitcoin is fungible in bitcoin. Right.

Matthew Foreman [00:43:30]:
One is there. Same thing. So that's the idea of it. Right. And that's what you want. If you're doing HIFO. Keep those records. Keep your records.

Matthew Foreman [00:43:38]:
Substantiation people always say, oh, this is.

Moish Peltz [00:43:41]:
Better records than ordinary record keeping.

Matthew Foreman [00:43:44]:
And you can, you,

Matthew Foreman [00:43:45]:
You know, because there are people who do. You know, I have a client who does, I don't know, like, 150 a year. He's doing, like, some weeks. He'll do none for a month, then he'll do four in a day, then he'll do none for a month, and then he'll do, like, eight a day for three weeks. Right. The normal kind of randomness of it. I think it's when he's bored and he uses HIFO and he does it. Right.

Matthew Foreman [00:44:06]:
He does it because he's identifying what he has and his stuff and that now he has a couple wallets that he uses. So the money's money, the tokens are in different. They're in different wallets. So it's easier to do. It's easier to prove. And so I think that that's what you want to do. And that can be a little excessive. You can mix it, but you need to say, this is what I'm selling, this is why, and this is how I do it.

Matthew Foreman [00:44:26]:
And that's really what you want to do. And I think a lot of stuff, you know, with audits, tax, just generally or really anything, is being able to prove what you did. Why? And why it's okay, you know, that's a lot, really, in any area. Right?

Kyle Lawrence [00:44:40]:
Right.

Moish Peltz [00:44:41]:
Yeah. And I know anecdotally, we've spoken to people that have, you know, hundreds of thousands or millions of transactions a year. And so, you know, I think. I think the average listener here probably has under a thousand, I would imagine. But the, the numbers quickly run up and then, you know, good luck to anyone trying to look back and figure it out what happened with those.

Matthew Foreman [00:45:05]:
I mean, the records are terrible. You know, I always say it's a trillion dollar company. If you had a functioning product that could scale, you know, to the point where, like, a trader could use it, you would have a trillion dollar market cap in six months. It'd be like that because you would destroy the market. You take over the market and people are like, oh, well, you know, like one of the big trading platforms would buy you. I'm like, no, one of the big banks would buy you. Apple would buy, you know, like Nvidia would buy you. Come on.

Matthew Foreman [00:45:34]:
You know, like anyone would do it. Because you have that market. You have. You figured something out, right? And I appreciate that. It's harder than I'm going to pretend it is, right? I know that it's technically complex to do, but it's that combination that needs to be there and it needs to exist, and it's just, it's just not there.

Kyle Lawrence [00:45:53]:
We've met a handful of, or at least I've met a handful of people at these conferences. I have this platform that can do all this for you across every chain. And I'm like, okay, cool. And I don't think any of them still exist. I wonder if I still have any of their shirts upstairs.

Moish Peltz [00:46:06]:
We've definitely spoken to some people that have legitimate, really impressive tax tracking software. In fact, I will say, if you're one of our listeners, please come on Block + Order. We should reach out to view them. That might be an interesting kind of round two here with, with Mr. Foreman is to have on some tax tracking and run through, you know, how it works on matters. Like, what was the client trying to do on this liquidity pool transaction where there's kind of ten intermediate steps and it's like, oh, there's something very clear in my mind at the time. This is. But now I don't remember.

Kyle Lawrence [00:46:45]:
But I wasn't wash trading. That definitely was not doing.

Matthew Foreman [00:46:48]:
I need to get the front of a balcony and get someone to sit next to me like Waldorf and Statler, and be like, what are you idiots doing? There.

Kyle Lawrence [00:46:59]:
I mean, great poll.

Matthew Foreman [00:47:00]:
Thank you. Appreciate it. So, no, I mean, look, like that's the problem, right? And I think that there's an issue, what I say actually think the biggest issue with that software is scale more than anything else. Because I think if you have a small data set, you get it, right? And then you start going to more and more and more and more and more. And then also you're in 60 places, each one outputs the data totally differently. Right. And then you're trying to do it for 5000 trades in an hour. And I just.

Matthew Foreman [00:47:26]:
Right, yeah, best of luck, man. That's tough. Yeah, that's tough.

Moish Peltz [00:47:31]:
So it's. And human error. Right. That's the other portion of it. Right.

Matthew Foreman [00:47:35]:
It's just, it's hard software and the.

Moish Peltz [00:47:37]:
Because we're all talking about bits and blocks and they're all, they're only as good as the humans that are controlling them. Right.

Matthew Foreman [00:47:43]:
Well, I always like banks, right. Bank software that does it. Like banks spend hundreds and, you know, billions of dollars a year, big bucks, to make that, to make software that they control the inputs, the display, the outputs and everything, right? And they spend money, huge amounts of money. They blow their budgets every single time and then they get it wrong and then they fix it and then they just constantly are updating and updating, updating, updating. And people are like, this should be easy. And it's just not. And I think that's the hard part. I mean, imagine getting one platform that could work on 800 different banks.

Matthew Foreman [00:48:14]:
Now add two zeros to that number, and they're banks that don't, you know, the platforms don't really want to work together. They don't. So.

Moish Peltz [00:48:21]:
Well, I think a crypto tech entrepreneur is going to solve this before the big bank platform entrepreneur. I think it's a problem that to the extent you can, you can minimize human, you can never eliminate human error, but then you can minimize it. I think someone working on millions of crypto transactions in this new kind of completely digital world is going to find a way to mostly crack that code.

Matthew Foreman [00:48:48]:
I'll tell you who's going to do it. It's going to be someone who works at a bank and quits. That's what we're going to, they're going to, they're going to get funding, they're gonna get funding from their bank.

Kyle Lawrence [00:48:55]:
The kernel of the idea, and they won't be burdened by the, by the banking regulations that probably constrain a lot of this tech.

Matthew Foreman [00:49:01]:
And they'll get funding from the bank itself or they'll get funding from someone who wants it to happen, right? And that's what they'll do. It just, it just takes time. And I think it's the kind of thing where I bet you someone's farther along than I think they are and the product will come. I don't say come out of nowhere, but I think it will. I think it'll be one of those ones where there's a couple that come along and all of a sudden there's one that just rushes everyone out of the way and that's it. You know, that's what will happen. And then everyone will be like, man, Matt Foreman, that guy's a genius. He knows how to code.

Matthew Foreman [00:49:33]:
And I'm like, yeah, that's why the last class I took was c++, so obviously.

Kyle Lawrence [00:49:40]:
I was going to do that in high school.

Moish Peltz [00:49:42]:
Well, Matt Foreman, thank you so much for coming on our show.

Matthew Foreman [00:49:45]:
My pleasure. Thank you.

Moish Peltz [00:49:46]:
We're looking forward to an audit free future. If you don't know, Matt is the host of our, another podcast on our FRB podcast network, How Tax Works. If you haven't checked it out, if you want to know more, we'll drop a link in the show notes. Please like and subscribe to his show. You can follow it all major, you know, wherever you podcast. Same for Block + Order. Thanks for tuning in, Kyle.

Kyle Lawrence [00:50:13]:
That was it, Matt, thank you for joining us. You definitely upped the handsome quotient of our show, which we greatly appreciate.

Matthew Foreman [00:50:18]:
I appreciate the kind words. They're false, but I appreciate it. Thank you.

Moish Peltz [00:50:23]:
All right, Kyle, we just finished recording an amazing episode with our partner, Matt Foreman, who is a tax extraordinaire and has a lot of interesting insights when it comes to crypto. He also hosts the How Tax Works podcast on the FRB podcast network. So, Kyle, what do you think of our first FRB interview?

Kyle Lawrence [00:50:46]:
Well, it was fantastic as always. Not that I would expect anything different. Matt is just an encyclopedia of all things tax. He brings such, and I'm not just blowing smoke, he brings such great insight to everything he does, and he explains really complicated tax situations in a manner that is easy to digest. I felt like he was explaining it to me like I was a five year old. And that's what this space needs to be honest with you, because you have crypto, you have tax very complicated things, and Matt can explain it very well. I think everybody will really enjoy this episode.

Moish Peltz [00:51:18]:
Yeah, I think this is a great explain it like I'm five tax episode, but if you stick with it, we get to some pretty hairy concepts. So I'm sure everyone will enjoy.

Kyle Lawrence [00:51:28]:
Well, that wraps it up for another episode of Block + Order. Remember to please like and subscribe and follow us on all our socials. Links are down below in the show notes. Please drop a comment below if there's a particular topic you'd like us to cover. We take all suggestions and constructive criticisms very seriously. Remember, nothing contained on the show is meant to be construed as legal and or financial advice. Except, of course, pay your taxes as Matt. So duly noted.

Kyle Lawrence [00:51:50]:
Please consult your own attorney if you're going to take the plunge. Neither discussion nor the fact that we may own certain assets or products covered on the show is meant to be an endorsement of said assets or products. Very special thank you to producer Abby, our og. Without her, the show would not be possible at all. And so, on behalf of Moish Peltz, I'm Kyle Lawrence and a very special thank you to Matt Foreman. Take care everybody.

Moish Peltz [00:52:12]:
Take care.