On August 1, 2021, the US Senate unveiled the draft text of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Bill), a highly anticipated $1 trillion infrastructure package negotiated by the White House and a bipartisan group of senators. As discussed below, the Bill includes a provision (Section 80603) that, if enacted in its current form, would amend the Internal Revenue Code (Code) to extend certain reporting requirements for transactions involving digital assets, including cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ether and other forms of digital tokens. The provision, which would generally go into effect on January 1, 2023, is intended to address a “tax gap” resulting from the underreporting of cryptocurrency transactions.

BROKER REPORTING

Code Section 6045 generally imposes reporting requirements on “every person doing business as a broker” with respect to sales affected by the broker on behalf of its clients. Under current law, such reporting is currently limited to sales of corporate stock, interests in trusts and partnerships, debt obligations, certain commodities and various associated derivatives. Pursuant to regulations, such sales are reported by the broker on Form 1099-B and the information required to be reported includes identifying information about the taxpayer and the property sold, the sale date and gross proceeds of the sale—and only with respect to the sale of a “covered security,” the adjusted basis of the property sold and the character of the gain or loss on the sale (i.e., long- or short-term capital gain).

For purposes of 1099-B reporting, a “broker” is defined to include a “dealer, a barter exchange, and any other person who (for a consideration) regularly acts as a middleman with respect to property or services.” A typical example of a broker subject to 1099-B reporting is a brokerage firm that facilitates transactions for customers in stocks, bonds and/or commodities.

The Bill expands the definition of a broker to include “any person who (for consideration) is responsible for regularly providing any service effectuating transfers of digital assets on behalf of another person.” Unless otherwise provided by the US Department of the Treasury’s regulations, a “digital asset” means “any digital representation of value which is recorded on a cryptographically secured distributed ledger or any similar technology as specified by [Treasury].” A cryptocurrency exchange would be considered a broker under this language.

The “basis” reporting under Section 6045 only applies to “covered securities.” Under current law, the term covered securities generally includes corporate stock shares, debt obligations, certain designated commodities (and derivatives thereof) and other financial instruments. The Bill would expand the definition of covered securities to include any “digital asset.” Accordingly, brokers subject to Section 6045 will be required to report the adjusted basis and the character of the gain or loss upon the sale of digital assets, including utility tokens, stablecoins and asset-backed tokens.

BROKER-TO-BROKER AND BROKER-TO-NON-BROKER TRANSFER REPORTING

Under current law, Code Section 6045A imposes additional reporting requirements that are generally applicable to the transfer of covered securities by one broker to another. Specifically, the transferor broker must [...]

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