US Treasury Issues New Crypto Tax Reporting Rules for Crypto Brokers

The US Treasury Department has finalized a new rule mandating that cryptocurrency brokers, including exchanges and payment processors, must report additional information on users' digital asset sales and exchanges to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), as reported by Reuters.

This move is aimed at curbing tax evasion among crypto users and stems from the bipartisan 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which projected generating approximately $28 billion in revenue over a decade.

Starting from next year for the 2026 tax season, the phased-in requirements align tax obligations for cryptocurrencies with those for brokers handling traditional financial instruments like stocks and bonds. The final rule, adjusted from the original proposal, aims to ease some burdens on brokers and includes a $10,000 threshold for reporting transactions involving stablecoins, a type of crypto token tied to assets like the U.S. dollar.

Following feedback from the cryptocurrency industry, which raised concerns about overly broad definitions of brokers and privacy violations, the Treasury Department reviewed over 44,000 comments. It plans to issue further guidelines later in the year for non-custodial brokers, such as decentralized crypto exchanges.

The Treasury stressed that tax obligations have always applied to digital asset sales and exchanges and that the new rule simply introduces reporting requirements to facilitate accurate tax filing under current law. A new tax reporting form, Form 1099-DA, will assist taxpayers in determining their tax liabilities and simplify the reporting process by providing necessary information to both the IRS and digital asset holders.

Currently, crypto users are required by the IRS to report various digital asset activities on their tax returns, regardless of whether gains were made, and must calculate these themselves, as trading platforms do not automatically provide this information to the IRS.