Yes, Steve, the 1099 describes payments made to others, or is supposed to, but 1099s are shifty and don't always conform to reality. So if you believe the 1099, Digicash either made at least $481K or got it somehow or just made up the number in a venture to fleece a lender or flummox a Chaum Family doubter. Note the checked box for "corrected." What was originally reported is unknown. But whoever got stiffed by Digicash's bankruptcy might like to know more about where the $481, real or fictional, came from as well as how that compares to what was initially "incorrectly" reported to IRS, to the bankruptcy court and to debtors -- some of the latter, as noted here long ago, are aggrieved employees. Note also that the 1099 is not signed and dated. Whether it is a draft or final is unknown. Could even be a piece of pure shit sunshine in accord with never, ever lie to the IRS principal all citizens follow. Robert, WTF you asking? The doc came from Anonymous, the one and only reliable source. Inhale, hold it.

At 12:12 PM 8/20/2002 -0700, Steve Schear wrote:

At 12:33 PM 8/20/2002 -0700, you wrote:

...

Digicash 1999 IRS forms:

http://cryptome.org/digicash-481k.htm

Perhaps its my ignorance, but doesn't this form merely mean DC paid the Chaum Family Trust $481K, not that the company made $481K?

(since the PKI market's been in the toilet, I've been learning about taxation) Even that assumes too much - there wasn't necessarily a transfer of money. If, for example (and this is purely hypothetical), Chaum had agreed to work for DC in exchange for 1,000,000 shares of stock, and $481K was the fair market value of those shares, then it would be proper to issue a 1099-MISC with that amount in Box 3 and Chaum would be taxed on that $481K as income, even though he received it as stock instead of cash. (If the circumstances were different, the income might be expected to show up in Box 7, "nonemployee compensation"; but here it's in Box 3, which should transfer directly either to Line 21 on the 1040 for miscellaneous income, or onto a Schedule C, assuming it's an individual taxpayer, which isn't the case here.) This sort of 1099 is also what you'd expect to see going to the recipient of cash as damages following or related to a lawsuit. If Digicash loaned money to Chaum and later forgave the debt (not unusual, where a founder or other important employee wants to exercise stock options early but doesn't have cash for the exercise), Chaum would be obligated to report the forgiven debt as income but a 1099 would not be required; that doesn't stop people from sending them anyway. -- Greg Broiles -- gbroiles@parrhesia.com -- PGP 0x26E4488c or 0x94245961