Coinbase Inc., a virtual currency exchange platform, was recently ordered by the United States District Court for the Northern District of California to provide the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) with 2013-2015 transaction data for thousands of Coinbase accounts. See United States v. Coinbase Inc., et al., No. 17-CV-01431-JSC, 2017 WL 5890052, (N.D. Cal. Nov. 28, 2017). The IRS, citing references to 5.9 million customers and more than $6 billion of bitcoin transactions on Coinbase’s website, identified a potential reporting gap, since only 800-900 taxpayers have identified bitcoin transactions on their tax returns in the past few years. (Coinbase’s website currently references 10 million customers and $50 billion in transactions.) Although the IRS narrowed the scope of the third-party record keeper summons it had originally issued to Coinbase under Code Sections 7602, 7603 and 7609 (aka, a “John Doe Summons”), the parties could not reach agreement on what was to be produced, and the government initiated enforcement proceedings earlier this year. (more…)