That makes absolutely no sense to me. If I get an offer from a bank that $200 is available to me if I open a checking account with them, then do I have to report it as income even if I don't open an account or perform any action to go after it?

The tip4commit payment is a tip paid because of work you did; elsewhere in IRS pub 525 and pub 531 it's clear (well, as clear as any IRS document ever is) that tips count as income.

the checking account offer isn't compensation for something you've already done. I think that makes it clearly distinguishable. But I'm not a lawyer; get competent legal advice before deciding you can pretend a tip-for-commit payment didn't happen.

The money is not available to you if you receive a contingent offer. Once you accept the offer then the money becomes available to you.

Same for tip4commit. You need to accept the their offer to give you money. Until you do, money is not available to you.

That depends. The difference here is that they are doing the bitcoin equivalent of leaving money on the table after you did unrelated work. Yea you have to reach down to the table and take it. But the IRS is saying until you do something about it, it counts as income because you effectively own it.

But again, lawyers haven't finished discussing all the legal ramifications of crypto-currencies or for that matter the internet in general.

Yes, it's true you're supposed to pay taxes for money earned in the year it was earned, not just when you happened to deposit the check. That has little to no bearing for this situation.

First, the money isn't available since it hasn't even been sent to you. Until you sign-up for the service, and provide a bitcoin address for the funds to be sent to your private key, they are not available. But more importantly, since you have no business relationship with the person giving the money, I would think the best characterization for the income is a tax-free gift (up to $14,000 per giver). But IANAL, and this isn't tax advice.

Either the service is just funneling money to software authors, or they are collecting it themselves and holding it unless and until authors want it. So if it's the latter, then they are raising money using someone else's name and reputation. Either way, that's not at all cool.

> In the US, if a payment is "available" to you, it must be reported as income at the time it becomes available. Failure to cash a paycheck doesn't mean you don't owe tax on it.

I don't believe that's correct. A check which is never cashed is not income, as the funds are never transferred there is no income, there is no income tax. The point of the IRS regulation is that tax period in which the check is received is the applicable one, rather than the tax period when it is cashed.