Tell HN: Cryptocurrency transactions >$10k require filing Form 8300 with the IRS

[bidandanswer]

To paraphrase, historically, all cash transactions worth more than $10k that occurred in the US or by a US-based business must be reported on IRS Form 8300. Failure to report within 15 days could result in a felony charge.

Wires, ACH transfers, and certain types of checks do not count as cash in this context.

In 2021, congress passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Snuck into this act was a line that expanded the definition of cash to include "digital assets" [1]. This new definition applies to all forms filed after December 31, 2023.

This means, as of yesterday, all cryptocurrency transactions worth >$10k must be reported via Form 8300.

However, Form 8300 is woefully incompatible with the nature of such transactions. This is some of the information you must attempt to gather for the form:

Payer's

- First & Last Name

- Address

- Social Security Number

Other

- "Digital Asset" is not one of the options for the type of cash received

- If paid by a DAO or protocol, it is unclear who, if anyone, can be specified as the person or business that paid you. They do not have a name, address, or social security number.

The IRS will soon be inundated by hundreds of thousands (I may be off on the low side by many orders of magnitude) of half-completed forms.

Whether or not the form is constitutional is a related legal question, the answer to which seems to be leaning "yes," unfortunately.

It is disheartening that opaque, incomplete reporting infrastructure is coupled with severe financial and criminal penalties.

Please, reach out to your congressperson and urge them to force the IRS to provide more clarity and guidance on this issue. Preferably with haste!

1. https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3684/text

[p-e-w]

> Please, reach out to your congressperson and urge them to force the IRS to provide more clarity and guidance on this issue.

Good luck with that, considering that the vagueness and uncertainty is almost surely the purpose of such measures, rather than an unintended consequence.

Today's regulatory landscape operates not by prohibiting things (which would be open to legal and social challenges), but by making compliance prohibitively expensive, or outright impossible.

[D13Fd → p-e-w]

> Today's regulatory landscape operates not by prohibiting things (which would be open to legal and social challenges), but by making compliance prohibitively expensive, or outright impossible.

This is a weird view and absolutely inapplicable to most things. It's basically a fantasy pushed by some politicians to get votes.

The form is just out of date.

[hlieberman]

This is incorrect. The IRS only requires the filing of form 8300 if, and only if, you've received a transaction in excess of $10k _during the course of your trade or business_[1]. It does not apply to private citizens engaging in personal activities, such as trading digital currency.

This is also not a new thing; it's the same reporting you've always had to do when you engage in transactions outside of the banking system (e.g., in cash).

[1]: 26 USC §6050I, "Any person who: (1) is engaged in a trade or business, and (2) who, in the course of such trade or business, receives more than $10,000 in [cash, including digital assets]..."

[elicksaur → hlieberman]

Are you a lawyer?

The OP law link clearly amends the section to add ‘digital asset’, so someone somewhere thought this section didn’t always apply to crypto transactions.

The trade or business caveat does seem important, but who says ‘trading digital currency’ is always a ‘personal activity’? I’d bet good money the IRS has a different opinion.

Personally, my takeaway is that if someone is regularly getting $10k transactions in crypto, they can probably hire good accountants and lawyers to figure this out for them, so I’m not too worried. Can wait for the clarifying court opinion to come out.

[lostmsu]

You must be mistaken about "all transactions". Cause that would apply to every single movement of money between your own regular bank accounts too. And every mortgage and loan payment of >$10k.

[paulproteus]

If it's a big problem, can you ask the DAO to mail you a check instead?

[bidandanswer → paulproteus]

It's a DAO; it doesn't necessarily have a bank account.

[fullspectrumdev → asylteltine]

It’s incredibly widely used in some countries (where the local currency sucks).

A fun example is how a fair few money exchangers in such countries will take USDT or BTC and give you the local currency at a better than official rate.

Also used for remittances without high fees and bullshit issues among some diasporas now.

Just because you don’t have a usecase for it beyond “number go up” doesn’t mean it’s worthless to everyone else lol.

[dafelst → fullspectrumdev]

Which countries?

[fullspectrumdev → dafelst]

Best example is Argentina, a good number of the “blue dollar” exchanges in the past few years have been taking crypto. According to friends, this is pretty common in some other South American countries also.

I also noticed a lot of currency exchanges in Ukraine deal in cryptocurrency since the war began (didn’t notice this before), and give preferential rates.

Some friends who have recently been travelling in SE Asia also have mentioned that conversion of crypto to whatever local currency was often available at currency exchangers.

I’m also informed that bitcoin is readily convertible in Nigeria, Botswana and Kenya by people who have recently travelled there.

I can see it as having a few advantages for the traveller tbh, easier to carry about than a big wad of fucking cash.

[southernplaces7 → sub7]

>This field is a cesspool and the Justice Department can't burn it down fast enough. There is literally 0 real world use cases after 15+ years other than fraud or find a bigger sucker speculation

It has become a truly stupid, tedious, repetitive cliche on this "hacker" site to see ignorant derision like this keep popping up. Sure, there are lots of scammers and con artists in the cryptocurrency world (though far fewer of them than in the normal world of banking, stock, and other financial markets), but the fundamental technologies are indeed interesting, potentially and actually useful and also something that real world people who don't live in privileged bubbles of sound government regularly do use in many parts of the world. I suggest you take a few minutes read about those things before shitting on something you personally dislike.

Also, in a world where even arguing for financial privacy and strong control of one's right to transact is often imlied to be "suspicious", i'm glad at least something has developed enough to potentially be a counterweight to using mainstream payments systems and praying to the regulatory gods that some megacorp doesn't arbitrarily, algorithmically and without recourse or any detailed explanation, block you completely from moving your money legitimately. No thanks to having absolutely no alternative to those systems.

[D13Fd → southernplaces7]

> Sure, there are lots of scammers and con artists in the cryptocurrency world . . . but the fundamental technologies are indeed interesting, potentially and actually useful and also something that real world people who don't live in privileged bubbles of sound government regularly do use in many parts of the world.

I'm sick of hearing about how "interesting" and "potentially . . . useful" the tech is when the vast majority of real-world uses are speculative bets or outright scams.

There may well be good uses in narrow circumstances outside of developed countries. But people still try to steer so many conversations towards cryptocurrency not because of those uses, but because they want to drive the value of the currency higher.

[southernplaces7 → D13Fd]

>I'm sick of hearing about how "interesting" and "potentially . . . useful" the tech is when the vast majority of real-world uses are speculative bets or outright scams.

There may well be good uses in narrow circumstances outside of developed countries. But people still try to steer so many conversations towards cryptocurrency not because of those uses, but because they want to drive the value of the currency higher.

Why does it matter if you're sick of hearing it? It remains true, for the technology, taking all the misueses by companies and people aside. You don't address that for one, the normal financial world is rife with abuses, and two, that those people in developing countries that you flippantly mention in passing make up hundreds of millions of individuals with major problems in their domestic governing systems.

Furthermore, somebody creating a crypto-related scam doesn't affect me personally if im not involved. Increasingly restrictive financial laws and algorithmic, arbitrary cancellations of accounts and transactions by major banking and finance institutions do on the other hand affect me whether I want them to or not. Sadly, one depends on these systems still, and an alternative would definitely be a useful thing.