The IRS said it was trying to avoid burdening users of stablecoins, especially if they are used to buy or pay for other tokens. Essentially, regular crypto investors and users who don’t make more than $10,000 a year from stablecoins will be exempt from reporting. Sales of stablecoins, the most frequent type of activity in the crypto market, will be tallied together in an “aggregate” report rather than as individual transactions, but more sophisticated, high-volume stablecoin investors will not be covered, the IRS said.
The IRS said that these tokens are not exempt, despite their aim to maintain stable value, because they “clearly fall within the statutory definition of a digital asset, since they are digital representations of the value of fiat currency recorded on a cryptographically secured distributed ledger.” It also said that ignoring these transactions entirely would “remove a source of information about digital asset transactions that the IRS can use to ensure taxpayers’ compliance with their reporting obligations.”
