10

April

2025

Congress nullifies IRS crypto broker reporting rule for decentralized operators

On April 10, 2025, President Donald Trump signed a binding resolution passed by both chambers of the Congress under the Congressional Review Act (RCA) that nullified digital asset reporting obligations imposed on operators of decentralized exchanges and DeFi platforms pursuant to a December 2024 rule promulgated by the Treasury Department’s Internal Revenue Service (IRS) under the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). Under the CRA, a disclaimer of an agency rule prevents the agency from passing the same or a substantially similar rule in the future.

The IRS had promulgated its final rule under the IIJA with only weeks left in President Joe Biden’s administration, seeking to require operators of ‘front-end’ web interfaces providing access to DEXs or other DeFi services to, starting in 2027, perform due diligence on users and file related transaction reports with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The originally proposed rule was sought to be applied even against the developers of DeFi protocols and self-hosted digital asset wallets, but the new legislation would likely prevent the IRS from pursuing similar rulemaking efforts in the future.

Last updated 05/21/2025.


United States (Regulatory)

History:

  • Apr 10, 2025: Exercising their power under the Congressional Review Act (CRA), the House and Senate passed—and President Donald Trump signed—H.J. Res. 25, effectively nullifying the IRS rule as applied to DeFi operators. When an agency rule is nullified under the CRA, it is forbidden from issuing the same or substantially similar rule. H.J. Res. 25.

  • Dec 30, 2024: Treasury and the IRS issue a final rule covering remaining components of the proposed rule, removing the requirements that originally would have directly implicated protocol developers. See 89 Fed. Reg. 106,928.

  • Jul 9, 2024: Treasury and the IRS issue a final rule covering only certain components of the proposed rule, including the calculation of basis for certain digital asset sales and exchanges. 89 Fed. Reg. 56,480.

  • Nov 13, 2023: Treasury and the IRS hold a public hearing discussing the proposed rule.

  • Aug 29, 2023: Treasury and the IRS publish proposed regulations that would have qualified many crypto service providers and protocol developers as information brokers under Section 6045 of the Internal Revenue Code, requiring them to make regular reports on customer transactions. 88 Fed. Reg. 59,576.

See the CRA resolution
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Tom Momberg

+17186645458 tom.momberg@dlxlaw.com

Tom advises clients in an array of matters related to blockchain technology, decentralized finance, banking and payments systems, financial products, and financial technology applications. He joined DLx Law as an attorney after working as in-house counsel for a payments and banking software service provider, advising on various legal and regulatory matters, operations, risk, customer due diligence, and corporate best practices.

Tom received his J.D. from George Mason University Law School in Virginia and his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Tom is a former journalist, and, while in law school, he interned for DLx Law and served as a law clerk for several federal institutions in Washington, D.C., including the CFTC, FCC, and House Judiciary Committee. Tom is admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia and the State of Oregon.

Angela Angelovska-Wilson

+12023651448 angela@dlxlaw.com

Angela is an early distributed ledger technology adopter and a leading authority in the evolving global legal and regulatory landscape surrounding distributed ledger technology and smart contracts. Prior to co-founding DLx Law, Angela served as the Chief Legal & Compliance Officer of Digital Asset and was part of the founding team.

Prior to joining Digital Asset, Angela was a partner at Reed Smith where she regularly advised clients on the implementation of new technologies to finance and the complex regulatory schemes involved in the development, creation, marketing, sale and servicing of various financial services and products. Before Reed Smith, Angela spent most of her career in various roles at Latham & Watkins, where she was recognized by The Legal 500 US among the top finance attorneys in the U.S.

Angela has a deep understanding of the Fin-Tech industry and in particular the distributed ledger industry, having been involved in a number of startups in various roles, as an employee, entrepreneur and advisor. In addition to DLx Law, Angela is also co-founder of Sila Inc., an innovative technology company.