I think you're thinking of is when a stock becomes worthless and you pay no tax on it. In the case of a short they would be paying capital gains if they made money.
As of mid May Finra shows about 5 million shares of short interest. More than I expected, but not a huge amount.
Anyway, the reason why I posted was because of the question, why don't shorts let it go to zero? Part of it is like someone else posted about the law of diminishing return, if you short from $15, an extra penny is nothing. That's very true, I doubt anyone shorted from that high a pps and still didn't cover, but you never know. Another reason is because there is a cost to holding a short. You pay interest on the borrowed shares and that number can fluctuate, usually up. Also anyone that's shorting below $5 must have $2.50, per share shorted, in cash in their brokerage account.
But the biggest reason is the weirdest. Sometimes these bk stocks get delisted by the judge, but there's a delay in getting the stock off the otc, and from your brokerage account. A friend of mine had that happen. The stock is like some zombie in his account and for like 2 months he had to pay the borrowing fees. There will be a time here when the judge revokes the commons, and the stock will still trade, and I guarantee someone will say "see I told you commons will survive" 2 days before their investment goes to zero.
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