US Treasury confirms miners and stakers exempt from IRS data reporting

Miners, software developers and staking pools will not be required to relay information about their clients’ crypto transactions to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Bloomberg reports this in a department letter to a group of senators.

In December 2021, Rob Portman, Mark Warner, Mike Crapo, Kyrsten Sinema, Pat Toomey and Cynthia Lummis sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

The infrastructure plan adopted by Joe Biden may require miners and node operators in blockchains, wallet developers, DeFi liquidity providers, and other non-custodial players to report to the IRS about their users’ activities.

Jonathan Davidson, the Treasury’s assistant secretary for legislative affairs, explained in the letter that “third parties that cannot access information necessary for the IRS should not fall under broker reporting requirements.”

According to Davidson, the Treasury intends to formulate guidance that clarifies the definition of ‘broker’. Such clarification would allay the concerns of industry participants, including Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey, as well as industry-friendly lawmakers.

Senators Ron Wyden, Cynthia Lummis and Pat Toomey proposed to exclude crypto-industry participants from the bipartisan plan. Their colleague Rob Portman introduced a counterproposal exempting only miners and sellers of hardware or software from IRS reporting, leaving the status of PoS validators unclear.

Subsequently, Democrats, Republicans and the Treasury reached a compromise, but the corresponding amendment did not receive unanimous support — Senator Richard Shelby opposed.

The Treasury is also considering other questions, including the extent to which other participants in the digital-asset market, such as centralized exchanges and those often described as decentralized exchanges, should be treated as brokers.

Pat Toomey welcomed the response, while noting that the matter is far from settled.

“This interpretation can always change; that is why Congress must act,” he said.

Earlier, in August 2021, the media citing a Finance Ministry official reported that the department does not intend to broadly interpret the definition of ‘broker’ for industry participants.

Earlier, the U.S. Treasury named the development of cryptocurrency tax guidance a priority.

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