Crypto firms to discuss digital currency taxing at approaching IRS summit

The IRS has recently invited representatives of numerous cryptocurrency startups to attend its summit that will allegedly take place on March 3rd. The event was originally reported by Bloomberg Tax, and the report stated that the IRS plans to discuss cryptocurrency taxes. According to what is known, the summit will take place at IRS’ headquarters in Washington, D.C.

More precisely, the agency seems to be struggling with the idea of balancing taxpayer service with regulatory enforcement, which is why it plans to hear the ideas from crypto businesses. The summit itself will reportedly include four panels regarding technology, problems with digital currency exchanges, regulatory guidance and compliance, and tax return preparations.

CoinDesk later confirmed that the rumors regarding the summit were indeed true, and that IRS spokesperson admitted as much. Furthermore, the Blockchain Association’s executive director, Kristin Smith, revealed that the IRS wanted to set up a similar event for at least a month.

Smith stated that she expects this to be an event where the agency will try to learn from the crypto/blockchain ecosystem participants, and she sees this as an opportunity to inform IRS’ thinking. However, the agency did not specifically say that it plans to use the knowledge and advice provided by crypto businesses in its future decision making.

The summit might be the IRS’ response to a recent GAO evaluation

Another interesting detail is that this development came soon after the GAO (Government Accountability Office) published a report that evaluated the agency’s approach to digital currencies. The US Congress’ watchdog pointed out that the IRS refused to adopt certain recommendations that were supposed to clarify some parts of the existing guidelines in regard to cryptocurrencies.

Previously, in 2019, the agency updated its crypto tax guidelines that were originally issued in 2014. On the occasion, the IRS granted a greater level of control over capital gains, and it also addressed hard forks, among other changes. Even so, the guidelines raised other questions, such as airdropped tokens, while it failed to issue details regarding smaller transactions.