In the latest development of crypto regulation, the US-based cryptocurrency platform, Kraken, has been compelled by court order to provide extensive user data to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for scrutiny over possible tax discrepancies.
The mandate, issued on a recent Friday by the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, obliges Kraken to submit account and transaction specifics to the IRS. This is to ascertain whether there has been any tax understatement from users.
The injunction demands that Kraken disclose information about users with transaction volumes surpassing $20,000 within a given year.
Data required includes both actual and assumed names, dates of birth, taxpayer ID numbers, residential addresses, contact numbers, email IDs, and other pertinent documentation.
The IRS formally approached the court in February, a short while after Kraken negotiated a settlement over allegations of securities law breaches connected to its staking service with the US Security Exchange Commission.
Previously, in 2021, the IRS had served a summons to Kraken which the platform failed to comply with, consequently leading to a deeper IRS probe into tax responsibilities of users transacting in cryptocurrency between 2016 and 2020.
In compliance with the court order, Kraken must also supply blockchain addresses and transaction hashes, components of the exchange’s transaction metadata. Moreover, Kraken might need to generate raw data for IRS’s use.
Kraken, boasting over $819 million in daily trading volume in the preceding 24 hours as per CoinGecko, ranks as a leading cryptocurrency exchange.
Judge’s Ruling on IRS’s Demands Judge Joseph Spero, who presided over the lawsuit, however, dismissed a few requests from the IRS.
He repudiated the agency’s call for occupational data and wealth sources from Kraken, along with insights from anti-money laundering probes.
Yet, the ruling, skewed towards the government’s favor, underlines an intensifying scrutiny of cryptocurrencies within the United States.
In the previous month, both Binance, the world’s foremost cryptocurrency exchange, and Coinbase, the largest crypto exchange domiciled in the US, faced lawsuits from the SEC.
Binance and its US partners faced 13 counts from the commission, ranging from allegedly functioning as an unlicensed exchange to offering unregistered securities.
Similarly, the SEC also accused Coinbase of operating without mandatory registrations, acting as an exchange, broker, or clearinghouse.
Moreover, the SEC has enforced punitive action against crypto platforms Kraken and Bittrex, as well as crypto lending service, Nexo, during the course of the year.
