A legal case filed by the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) against the largest crypto exchange in the US was just won by the petitioner. The firm has been ordered to submit to the summons which the IRS presented to the company in December 2016. The US tax authority filed a legal case against Coinbase back in March 2017.
The IRS is going after clients of the exchange who haven’t reported their cryptocurrency capital gains to the IRS. The period for which the US tax authorities require data is between calendar years 2013 and 2015.
The judgement comes after about 8 months in court. According to the IRS, individuals might be using their cryptocurrency holdings to avoid paying taxes. The decision doesn’t come as a major surprise since judge Jacqueline Corley indicted that she will permit the IRS to investigate the exchange’s customers.
Coinbase has been ordered to submit to the IRS personal data for every client that had at least $20,000 with the exchange. Data includes the client’s taxpayer ID number, name, birth date, address and all periodic statements of the account or invoices.
Also, US tax authorities will gain access to client logs. Those include the date, type, and amount of every transaction, the balance after the transfer and the names of parties to the transactions.
The ruling is a continuation of an ongoing saga which started about a year ago with Coinbase seeking all the legal ways to prevent the IRS from getting client data. The amount of data that the US authorities might have to receive next year related to this year’s transaction logs might be more difficult to analyze due to the fact that so many users will be holding over $20,000 at the end of the year (assuming prices remain close to $10,000).
Either way, the ongoing rollercoaster on the crypto markets continues with crypto CFD brokers already starting to increase leverage requirements as high as 50 percent amid growing worries about market exposure.
(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
