WASHINGTON — In a hunt for funds to help pay for the Senate’s bipartisan infrastructure package, lawmakers have turned to the cryptocurrency industry as a potential source of tax revenue and are proposing tougher scrutiny of digital transactions. A provision of the package would require cryptocurrency brokers and investors to provide more disclosure about their transactions to the Internal Revenue Service. The aim is to bring more transparency to an opaque sector, which critics argue is a haven for money laundering and tax evasion. But the provision also underscores the realization in Washington that the $2 trillion industry is here to stay and offers a new opportunity to generate federal tax revenue. The potential for more federal scrutiny of crypto transactions is rattling nerves in the nascent financial technology industry, which has so far escaped the kind of rigorous oversight applied to traditional financial services.

Source: International New York Times July 30, 2021 20:26 UTC