On July 30, President Trump’s Working Group on Digital Assets released its comprehensive “Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology” report (the Report). The 160-plus-page report sets forth a series of recommendations seeking to “ensure crypto becomes a hallmark of the new American Golden Age” while outlining a proposed framework for regulating digital assets. A key section of the Report focuses on the taxation of digital assets and sets forth proposals on the modernization of the tax framework to better align with the realities of the digital asset ecosystem. The proposals address a range of substantive tax issues, including the classification of digital assets for tax purposes, the timing and character of income from mining and staking activities, and the tax treatment of stablecoins, and also recommends updates to taxpayer and third-party reporting requirements.

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA), passed into law on August 16, 2022, represented a shift in the world of U.S. federal tax enforcement. This shift—or as most might suggest, a reversal of course—departed from the IRS that many have come to know in recent years, maligned by funding cuts, widespread attrition, and loss of institutional knowledge needed to administer the nation’s complex set of federal tax laws.

On September 8, 2023, the IRS announced that it will start a “sweeping, historic effort to restore fairness in tax compliance” by focusing its attention on high-income taxpayers, partnerships, large corporations, and promoters.