Coinbase Global Tax VP Slammed Congress For Controversial Crypto Bill

The Coinbase global tax VP slammed Congress for the controversial crypto tax provisions saying they jumped the gun and warned the bill could impact 60 million Americans so let’s read more in our latest coinbase news.

The Coinbase global VP of tax Lawrence Zlatkin took aim at the rushed crypto provisions added to the Congress’ bipartisan infrastructure bill at the last minute and slammed the lawmakers for inserting amendments that will impact 60 million Americans. The blog post took aim at an editorial article from Bloomberg which praised the infrastructure bill’s crypto provisions and criticized the lack of opportunity for the public discourse regarding the legislation and estimated 20% of the US population which invested in crypto already:

“Today, around 60 million Americans own crypto — roughly one-fifth of the entire U.S. population. Those Americans, and the entire crypto ecosystem, deserve more dialogue than midnight provisions inserted at the last minute.”

Zlatkin noted that the outrage over the bill’s language extended beyond the conflicts of the crypto industry and estimated that the popular public outcry saw the senators contacted by about 80,000 people within a few days. In particular, the coinbase executive outlined the broad definition of crypto asset brokers included in the bill, which will impose strict reporting requirements on network validators and software devs who will be unable to comply with the obligations under the new bill in the current form.

“As long as the statute says that software developers, miners, speakers must do the impossible, there is no lawyer who would advise them to risk operating in violation of laws whose penalties for non-compliance would easily bankrupt them.  This will harm innovation and stifle the potential of a hugely important technology at its earliest stages of development […] Tax policy should be thoughtful and deliberate. Broad overreach is a regulatory mistake.”

Zlatkin added that the digital asset brokers should be subject to the same reporting requirements as mainstream brokerage companies. The controversial infrastructure bill passed the Senate recently and the onlookers there hope to see amend the legislation as it moves to the House for scrutiny in the coming months.

As recently reported, The crypto exchange Coinbase added $500M worth of crypto assets to its balance sheet but also it will be placing 10% of all future profits into crypto. In February, as it prepared to go public via a direct listing, Coinbase published an S-1 filing showing that it held somewhere between $365 million in crypto and $230 million was in Bitcoin, $53M in Ethereum, $34 million in other crypto-assets and $49 million in stablecoins.