House infrastructure bill passes with crypto tax provision
In yet another 11th-hour showdown on Capitol Hill Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives approved passage of a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, which includes a bevy of upgrades to the country's aging infrastructure but also a controversial cryptocurrency tax reporting requirement. The Senate had passed the infrastructure bill in August after lawmakers stopped any attempts at amending a crypto provision.
The controversy concerned a tax reporting requirement within the bill that sought to expand the definition of a broker for Internal Revenue Service purposes. The reporting requirement would see all brokers report transactions under the current tax code. Crypto industry proponents, however, were concerned that the definition would be too broad, capturing entities like miners and other parties that don't actually facilitate transactions.
Another provision in the bill included amending tax code section 6050I. The law, written in 1984 to apply to in-person cash transactions over $10,000, requires recipients to verify the sender's personal information and record their Social Security number, the nature of the transaction and other information, and report the transaction to the government within 15 days. Failure to do so is a felony and some lawyers noted that when applied to cryptocurrencies and other digital assets such as non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, it would be almost impossible to comply with the law.
The pushback against the provision caused the the bill's passage to be delayed in the Senate. Ultimately, however, the Senate passed the bill without adopting any amendments.
The bill now heads to the White House for President Joe Biden's signature.