The lawmakers are proposing to pay for the infrastructure bill approved by the Senate by imposing the requirements for tax-reporting for cryptocurrency brokers. This includes the way stockbrokers are required to report the sales of the customers to the IRS. This is a major step that could lead to tighter cryptocurrency regulation in the country, something that the Biden administration has been moving toward. As per the estimates of congressional accountants, in over 10 years, this plan will be able to raise $28 billion.
This $28 billion will get quickly stretched. Just the cost of replacing the structurally deficient bridges in the country might take $25.6 billion. Needless to say that the currency you are unable to hold might be paying for bridges, roads, internet broadband access, shoring up electrical grids, and water systems. As per President Joe Biden, this is a generational investment that will be on par with the 50s Interstate highway system or 1800s transcontinental railroad.
Some brokers of cryptocurrencies already report their transactions to the IRS. However, most of them don’t. Brokers are the experts who sell and buy orders on the cryptocurrency exchange for the users. These exchanges have to collect the users’ personal identity information and report the annual activity to the Internal Revenue Service.
This step taken by the Congress is testament to the fact that cryptocurrencies have seen an explosive growth in the past few years. It is a potential revenue source for the government and government officials are pushing to put some reins around this mostly unregulated market.
