IRS crypto tax reporting rules threat to industry — Coinbase legal chief

Coinbase crypto exchange chief legal officer Paul Grewal called on the crypto community to join the movement against the United States Treasury’s proposed tax reporting regulations on cryptocurrencies. Grewal urged the community to oppose the proposed regulations, as they could set a dangerous precedent for surveillance.

Grewal took to X (formerly Twitter) to address the concerns associated with the proposed crypto tax reporting rules and claimed they go beyond the congressional mandate to establish tax reporting rules. He added that if the proposed regulations become a law, it would put “digital assets at a disadvantage and threaten to harm a nascent industry when it’s just getting started.“

Everyone who cares about fairness and supports American innovation should chime in on Treasury’s proposed regulations for tax reporting of digital assets. You can join @StandwithCrypto’s opposition to the rulemaking here. 1/4 https://t.co/4eALt1Frxo

— paulgrewal.eth (@iampaulgrewal) October 18, 2023

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) released a draft of proposed regulations for crypto tax reporting on Aug. 25. Under the proposed rules crypto brokers would be required to use a new form to report to simplify tax filing and cut down on tax cheating. The proposed regulations include both centralized and some decentralized exchanges, crypto payment processors, and certain online wallets as crypto brokers.

The Treasury Department claimed that the new form would simplify the tax filing process as it would help taxpayers determine if they owe taxes rather than having to make complicated calculations or pay digital asset tax preparation services to file their tax returns. If approved, the new tax regime will come into effect from 2026 and the brokers will be required to start reporting 2025 transactions in January 2026 via Form 1099-DA. However, many U.S. lawmakers urged the IRS to implement crypto tax reporting requirements before 2026.

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The Treasury Department claimed the crypto tax reporting rules would put digital assets in line with traditional financial reporting, but Coinbase’s legal officer insists this is not the case. Grewal, in his X post, noted that the proposed rules would set a “dangerous precedent for surveillance of the everyday financial activities of consumers by requiring nearly every digital asset transaction – even the purchase of a cup of coffee – to be reported.”

Coinbase chief legal officer noted that the proposed regulations would require the collection of a significant amount of user data that bears no “legitimate public purpose.” Grewal said the data collection would overburden Web3 startups with costly requirements while offering the “IRS with more data than they can ingest and analyze.”

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