By Hannah Lang

(Reuters) – The U.S. Treasury finalized a rule on Friday requiring cryptocurrency brokers, including exchanges and payment processors, to report fresh information about users’ sales and exchanges of digital assets to the Internal Revenue Service.

The fresh requirements are intended to crack down on cryptocurrency users who may not be paying taxes and stem from the $1 trillion bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021. At the time the bill was passed, it was estimated that the fresh rules could raise close to $28 billion over the course of a decade.

The regulations, which will take effect next year for the 2026 tax season, are intended to bring tax requirements for cryptocurrencies in line with current reporting requirements for brokers dealing in other financial instruments such as bonds and stocks, according to the Treasury Department.

The final rule was modified from Treasury’s original proposal to reduce some burdens on brokers and phase in the fresh requirements, Treasury officials said. It also includes a $10,000 threshold for reporting transactions involving stablecoins, a type of crypto token typically tied to assets like the U.S. dollar.

The cryptocurrency industry waged a comment campaign after the Treasury proposed the rule last year, arguing that the proposal’s definition of a broker was too broad and that the requirements violated the privacy of cryptocurrency owners.

The Treasury said it had considered more than 44,000 comments on the proposal. It also said it expects to issue additional regulations later this year to establish tax reporting requirements for non-custodial brokers, including decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges.

In a statement, the Treasury Department emphasized that cryptocurrency owners “have always been required to pay tax on the sale or exchange of digital assets” and that the fresh rules “simply created reporting requirements… to help taxpayers file accurate returns and pay taxes owed under applicable law.”

According to the Treasury Department, the regulations introduce a fresh tax reporting form, called Form 1099-DA, which is intended to lend a hand taxpayers determine whether they are delinquent on taxes and also lend a hand cryptocurrency users avoid having to perform intricate calculations to determine their profits.

Brokers would have to send forms to both the IRS and digital asset holders to get lend a hand preparing their tax returns.

The IRS currently requires cryptocurrency users to report many digital asset activities on their tax returns, regardless of whether those transactions resulted in a profit. Users are required to perform these calculations themselves, and platforms where digital assets are traded do not provide the IRS with this information.