It really is ridiculous. I've wondered about taxes as a deterrent too. They seem to be making this a lot more difficult then it needs to be. I suppose the community needs to start getting vocal also though, and start nagging our representatives to simplify this.

My accountant said to log the value in USD on claiming rewards, then value when sold to btc in USD, then value btc was sold for. Pretty crazy. I'm going to create a spread sheet over the week just to handle steem transactions I guess.