Senators Seek to Amend Biden’s Crypto Infrastructure Bill

Senators Want to Clarify Crypto Language in Infrastructure Bill

In the wake of the US President Joe Biden signing the much-scrutinized $1 trillion infrastructure bill in a White House ceremony on Monday, a bipartisan team of the US senators are planning to introduce a new bill that seeks to revise some of the infrastructure bill’s cryptocurrency tax reporting rules, Bloomberg reported.

Bitcoin-friendly Senator Cynthia Lummis, (R-Wyoming) and Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee together wrote the bill that will shield certain crypto actors from tax reporting requirements.

The yet-to-be-released wants to clarify crypto tax reporting requirements. This includes redefining the term ‘digital asset brokers’ and its exclusion of crypto miners, stakers, wallet providers, and blockchain software developers so that they are not responsible for reporting customer data to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Commenting on this, Oregon Democrat, Ron Wyden, said in a statement:

Infrastructure Bill Targets Crypto Industry

Earlier this year, the crypto industry collectively voiced against a section of Biden’s infrastructure during negotiations in the Senate. The bill included a provision on redefining the definition of broker for tax purposes for those dealing with digital assets.

Under the legislation, businesses need to report digital asset transactions above $10,000 to the IRS in addition to reporting for making digital coin transfers. The legislation also authorized the IRS to seek taxes that the government had not known about, as the transactions weren’t required to be reported.

Industry proponents were worried that the language in the bill was too broad as it mandated crypto miners and software developers to report tax data to the IRS for data for which they can’t access.