> It does nothing of the sort. It's a enormous leap based on an assumption of bad faith to go from expecting protocol users to sort out their own personal tax situation to "willfully assisting in tax avoidance."
There are obviously lots of subtleties here, including places where no-one knows how the legal implications will shake out, but "expecting … users to sort out their own personal tax situation" isn't always an option; for example, my bank isn't allowed to assume I'll sort out my own personal tax situation and must report my interest earned, whereas, say, Amazon is allowed to make that assumption, and so need not report the items that they have sold to me. It could be that this is a more Amazon-y situation, but it could also be that it's a more traditional-bank-y situation. Probably even the IRS and Leshner, but definitely those of us who aren't involved in the situation, don't know which it is.
Precisely, which is why the jump to "strongly implies willfully assisting in tax avoidance" comes off so poorly. In my opinion, it not only mischaracterizes what is happening, it imputes ill intent to boot. Guidance for DeFi apps is poor currently and policy in this area is actively being legislated. In the meantime, shifting the onus for tax reporting back onto individual users !== willful assistance in tax avoidance any more than companies not witholding income taxes from payroll pre-WW2 was willful assistance in tax avoidance.
Further, since these transactions are all captured on a public ledger, anyone using this for tax avoidance is really just electing to pay their taxes later with massive penalties and possible jail time once the IRS gets around to tying addresses with unreported transactions to fiat on/off ramp transactions that are KYC'd.
There are obviously lots of subtleties here, including places where no-one knows how the legal implications will shake out, but "expecting … users to sort out their own personal tax situation" isn't always an option; for example, my bank isn't allowed to assume I'll sort out my own personal tax situation and must report my interest earned, whereas, say, Amazon is allowed to make that assumption, and so need not report the items that they have sold to me. It could be that this is a more Amazon-y situation, but it could also be that it's a more traditional-bank-y situation. Probably even the IRS and Leshner, but definitely those of us who aren't involved in the situation, don't know which it is.