Today, 21 members of Congress, led by Rep. Tom Emmer, sent a letter asking the agency to issue needed guidance on the tax consequences and basic reporting requirements for taxpayers that use virtual currencies. Congress has now sent four separate letters to the IRS about this issue.
In a statement, Rep. Emmer’s office said:
While initial guidance was provided, ambiguity around basic questions of how taxpayers should calculate and track the basis of their virtual currency holdings is unacceptable. According to a recent report from Coin Center, the 2014 guidance by the IRS failed to address fundamental tax questions, and repeated requests to the IRS for additional clarity have been made by a variety of entities. It also indicates that rather than providing clarity, the IRS has instead increased enforcement activities against taxpayers who “misreport” their cryptocurrency transactions.
Coin Center worked with Rep. Emmer to produce the bipartisan letter, which reflects several of the questions and concerns outlined in our recent report about cryptocurrency taxation, A Duty to Answer. The letter notes that the single piece of crypto tax guidance the IRS has released—the six-page “IRS Virtual Currency Guidance” from early 2014—fails to answer basic questions about crypto taxes, and that taxpayers deserve clarity from the agency. In other words, as the IRS Taxpayer Advocate put it a decade ago, “the IRS has a duty to answer all of the basic questions about transactions undertaken regularly by significant numbers of taxpayers, such as those involving virtual items.” In addition to describing these questions, our report provides common-sense recommendations on how the IRS should answer them.
In signing the letter, Rep. Emmer was joined by the other co-chairs of the Congressional Blockchain Caucus—Reps. Bill Foster, David Schweikert, and Darren Soto—as well as Reps. Patrick McHenry, James P. McGovern, French Hill, Terri Sewell, Warren Davidson, Stephen F. Lynch, Ted Budd, Eric Swalwell, Trey Hollingsworth, Ed Perlmutter, Greg Gianforte, Josh Gottheimer, Mark Meadows, Lance Gooden, Matt Gaetz, Ted S. Yoho, and Bryan Steil.