Why IRS 1099-B tax form won’t work for all digital currency

As the legal battle over U.S. Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) right to gain access to Coinbase user records continues to heat up, Brian Armstrong, co-founder and CEO of the bitcoin exchange, proposed an idea.

His suggestion? Require virtual currency companies to issue a 1099-B tax form, just like brokers do. There is no third-party information for digital currency in the United States, which, IRS said that the “likelihood of underreporting is significant.”

If you recall, a Northern California District Court judge allowed the tax agency late last year to require Coinbase to submit records of its customer transactions as part of an investigation into possible tax fraud activities—an order that the bitcoin wallet service is challenging on grounds that it’s too broad and might incriminate customers who have done nothing wrong.

Several weeks ago, Armstrong broke his silence on the issue with a blog post, in which he questioned why Coinbase—which he says has cooperated with the IRS in the past—appears to be the only exchange targeted by the agency. In his post, the Coinbase executive suggested that IRS require all virtual currency exchanges to issue a 1099-B at the end of the year to all of their U.S. customers, a copy of which will be sent to the tax agency.