Of course there's a way to give the item value - pass it to someone who is willing to pay for it with dollars. Likewise, the value of your bartered goods can be calculated on a dollar basis by examining what other people for the same goods. Really, how dumb do people think the IRS are? These are like middle school pranks for getting out of doing your homework.
I am sure this isn't their first time round the block either when it comes to pulling appart schemes to transfer wealth in something other than dollars.
> Of course there's a way to give the item value - pass it to someone who is willing to pay for it with dollars.
The previous posts said there would be no possible way to transfer the item into dollars. By definition, that makes the value equal to zero dollars. There is no transaction that can possibly made to demonstrate the fair market value being any greater. Of course the IRS will find some loophole to fabricate some value above zero, but that doesn't change the real market value.
It's a false premise. If the goods are worth accumulating then they're fungible. Bnning teh exchange of something as a means of sidestepping currency transaction rules does not destroy inherent value.
Suppose, for example, you have a scheme where people use goats as currency. The goats are all kept on a big farm somewhere, and when one person wants to transfer money to someone else who is a member of the scheme the farm operator updates the notional total of goats owned by each party. If there are enough members in the pool to provide a variety of goods and services to each other, it could be a tax avoidance scheme. You could proscribe that trade, while estimating liability by looking at the number of goats owned by the individual members and/or the $ value of goods and services exchanged, even if it were impractical to realize that money by selling the goats (because they all had a disease or because the nominal value had become wildly inflated compared to the going rate in agricultural markets).
