The U.S. Treasury Department’s IRS introduces a new cryptocurrency tax regime for 2025, mandating detailed reporting by brokers and trading platforms. While regulations for DeFi and non-custodial wallets are delayed, the new rules aim to enhance transparency and compliance in the growing digital asset market.
According to the Odaily Department, the US Treasury Department’s Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has declared a cryptocurrency tax method for 2025. The system is designed to create record-keeping regulations for digital asset contractors. However, the regulations related to Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and non-custodial wallets have been temporarily stopped. The agency thinks that mainstream crypto applications handling the huge majority of transactions can no longer wait for regulations, but other problems require more research and will create corresponding regulations ‘later this year’.
The newly operated tax regulations will take effect for transactions from 2025 and needed brokers to closely monitor the expense basis of their users tokens from 2026. The new regulations for cryptocurrency contractors need trading platforms, custodial wallet services, and digital asset exchange platforms to provide disclosures about user asset changes and earnings. These assets will also contain stablecoins such as USDT and USDC and high-value Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) in very limited cases, although the IRS explicitly refuses to solve the long-standing discussion about whether tokens should be considered protection or commodities.
Under the new regulations, the IRS will not need reporting of most regular stablecoin sales and has set an yearly threshold of $600 for NFT earnings, which requires it to be reported only if it exceeds this threshold.
Controversial rule
The procedure of writing this controversial tax rule increased widespread thinking from the company that the U.S. administration would overreach by imposing impossible needs on miners, online forums, software developers and other entities that aid investors but wouldn’t traditionally be believed contractors and don’t have the data about users nor the disclosure infrastructure that would let them comply.
The IRS said it recognizes that crypto contractors shouldn’t include those “giving validation services without offering other functions or services, or individuals that are solely engaged in the corporation of selling particular hardware, or licensing certain software, for which the sole function is to allow individuals to control private keys which are utilized for accessing digital assets on a distributed ledger.”
But the IRS added that if Congress allows one of its bills that would regulate stablecoin providers, the tax regulations may have to be revised.
The tax company also faced high legal arguments in determining how to control NFTs, according to its high notes on that topic, and the agency decided that only taxpayers who make more than $600 in a year from their NFT sales require their aggregated proceeds reported to the administration. The resulting filings will include the taxpayers’ identifying data, the number of NFTs purchased and what the gains were.
As part of its struggles, the IRS published its definition for new assets and the different activities covered by Friday’s regulations.
The IRS also explained a safe harbor for certain reporting needs “on which taxpayers may depend to allocate unused basis of digital assets to useful assets held within each wallet or account of the taxpayer as of Jan. 1, 2025,” it stated.
Earlier this year, the U.S. tax company had published a proposed 1099-DA form to track crypto transactions, the form that millions of crypto investors would get from their contractors.