On Saturday, two senators, Perianne Boring, creator and president of the Digital Chamber of Commerce, laid out the proposed change in detail, but the industry still feels it’s not enough.
A new amendment to the infrastructure bill has been introduced by Senators Mark Warner and Kyrsten Sinema of the United States Senate, both Democrats from Virginia and Arizona, respectively. The amendment would reduce the burden on miners and wallet providers who must file cryptocurrency tax returns.
Senators are supporting an amendment that would exempt bitcoin miners as well as hardware and software wallet providers from new tax reporting requirements, according to Perianne Boring’s report from Saturday afternoon.
A previous change, offered by the same lawmakers, as well as Ohio Republican Rob Portman, would be expanded by the new amendment proposed today.
Senator @MarkWarner and @SenatorSinema have offered a new amendment with tech neutral language. If cloture is invoked, there will be 30 hours of debate left, then they will vote on the base text. We still don’t have any indication when they are going to vote on amendments. pic.twitter.com/4IpiFkfpud
— Perianne Boring (@PerianneDC) August 7, 2021Currently, the bill deems these businesses to be “brokers” who assist the movement of cryptocurrencies between users, according to the present form. The monitoring and tracking of user transactions would be required if these entities are classed as brokers rather than as actual consumers, if they are categorised as brokers.
Opponents of the proposed law claim that it would be practically hard for miners to meet their commitments in a satisfactory manner.
With only a few exceptions, the cryptocurrency community has gathered together to present a united front in opposition to the proposed infrastructure legislation. Many social media personalities have urged their followers to call their state and local lawmakers in order to express their opposition to the proposed legislation.
Because the new tax reporting rules are impracticable for cryptocurrency miners, wallet service providers, and protocol developers, they believe its implementation will hinder innovation and acceptance in the industry’s early stages.
Agreed, this is not the time to pick technology winners or losers in cryptocurrency technology. There is no crisis that compels hasty legislation.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 6, 2021In a prior edition of the bill presented by Mark Warner, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey expressed his opposition, claiming that the “amendment makes it worse, especially for open source developers.”
This bill has so many issues. And the @MarkWarner amendment makes it worse, especially for open source developers.
And no rationale has been provided…only rumors. https://t.co/cMAMk2TuBX
— jack⚡️ (@jack) August 7, 2021Jerry Brito, the executive director of Coin Center, a Washington, D.C.-based crypto think tank, authored a lengthy thread outlining two competing amendments and their influence on the digital asset market.
He compared Warner’s initial amendment, which he called a “misguided attempt to pick technological winners and losers,” with an alternative proposal put up by a bipartisan group led by Ron Wyden, Cynthia Lummis, and Pat Toomey.
1/ We need to fight misguided attempts to pick technological winners and losers, but we can’t lose sight of another important difference between the Warner-Portman-Sinema amendment and the Wyden-Lummis-Toomey amendment.
— Jerry Brito (@jerrybrito) August 6, 2021Brito stated on Saturday that Warner’s new proposal is “still not as good as the Wyden-Lummis-Toomey amendment,” which exempts protocol developers from the tax reporting requirement.
