Crypto Tax: IRS Invites Industry Stakeholders to Parley in March

The United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is inviting cryptocurrency stakeholders to a crypto tax summit in March. The move comes as the IRS has declared its intention to pursue robust virtual currency tax enforcement in 2020.

IRS and Crypto Groups to Discuss Taxation Policies

According to Bloomberg Tax, the IRS has sent email invitations to cryptocurrency businesses and other stakeholders for a summit on March 3, 2020. During the meeting, the IRS and members of the U.S. cryptocurrency market are expected to hold discussions surrounding crypto tax laws.

The IRS invitation also revealed that the summit will have four 90-minute panel discussions on crypto tax matters like compliance, filing of returns, and necessary information required from cryptocurrency exchanges.

Industry stakeholders will have the opportunity to engage IRS officials as well as other personnel from different offices under the Treasury Department.

In 2020, the IRS has stated that it will be adopting stricter crypto tax policing measures. Back in 2019, the IRS sent warning letters to crypto exchange users informing them of discrepancies between their filings and the transaction data received from these platforms.

Earlier in the year, the IRS declared that crypto and the gig economy will form a major part of its focus for the 2020 tax season. As part of such efforts, the U.S. tax agency has included a crypto question on Form 1040 asking taxpayers if they engaged in any cryptocurrency transaction in the previous year.

US Crypto Tax Laws Still Need Polishing

While the IRS appears keen on robust crypto tax compliance, some stakeholders say the agency’s guidelines still need some degree of clarification. As previously reported by BTCManager, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently argued that some aspects of the IRS crypto tax guidelines are unenforceable.

The GAO also asked the IRS to clarify which Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) rules apply to cryptocurrency taxation. For its part, the IRS argued that it was not time to address such concerns and that subsequent guidelines will provide clarification on the matter.

The matter of what constitutes a taxable digital token also raised some concern over the past few weeks with the IRS’ previous definition of virtual currencies including game tokens. Under this paradigm, holders of game tokens like V-bucks (on Fortnite) would have been required to file crypto taxes.

The IRS has since updated its website, restricting its classification of virtual currencies to tokens like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH).