To paraphrase, historically, all cash transactions worth more than $10k that occurred during the course of your trade or business must be reported on IRS Form 8300. Failure to report within 15 days could result in a felony charge.
To clarify "during the course of your trade or business," here are two examples from the IRS' official website:
1. Example: Dave Chestnut bought a new car and sold his old one for $11,000. The buyer paid Mr. Chestnut in cash. Since Mr. Chestnut is not in the trade or business of selling cars, he would not be required to report the receipt of cash exceeding $10,000 from the sale of the car.
2. Example: You are a travel agent. A client pays you $8,000 in cash for a trip. Two days later, the same client pays you $3,000 more in cash to include another person on the trip. These are related transactions, and you must file Form 8300 to report them.
Additionally, 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 two days ago, all qualifying cryptocurrency transactions must be reported via Form 8300.
To give some real world examples that are extremely common occurrences in the industry today:
1. Example: An engineer writes fully open-source, verifiable smart contract code for a company (or a DAO, it doesn't matter which) that pays them in USDC. Their entire salary is now considered cash and must be reported via Form 8300.
2. Example: Someone who obtained money legitimately retains a US lawyer and pays them in USDC because it's cheaper, faster, and easier. The US lawyer is now required to dox their own client, by filing Form 8300, violating the client's right to privacy.
Unfortunately, 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. If you are operating a trade or business whose cash flow occurs in any digital asset, you must figure out how to complete an uncomplete-able IRS form and you are on the hook for severe financial and criminal penalties if you do not.
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.
1. https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3684/text
