[davidgh]

Profit or gain may be measured in USD, but a transaction does not need to include USD to generate a taxable gain.

The IRS has all sorts of rules involving barters, meaning trading one asset for another without USD being involved in the transaction at all. [1]

Say you buy a car for $10k, let it sit in your garage for 30 years and it now becomes a classic vintage worth $30k. If you go and trade that car for a new motorcycle worth $30k, the IRS requires you to record your $20k gain on the car when you make the trade for the motorcycle.

Where does it end? When you’ve paid the IRS the tax you owe, as per the law.

Regarding the pocket lint, if you tell me you’ll pay $10k for mine, I have no gain. When the sale happens, I recognize the $10k gain and pay the tax. This seems to be a pretty typical transaction for pocket lint or a truckload of butter.

1. https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420

[dmoy]

Or actually if it was literally pocket lint, y'all could probably get away with having the payer file form 709 and the seller doing nothing, and nobody would owe any tax.