IRS Is Coming For Your Crypto With A $32M Request

The United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) requested $32 million of funding to enhance its cryptocurrency enforcement efforts.

What Happened: The IRS Fiscal Year 2022 Budget asks for a $13.2 billion budget, of which $32 million would be spent on reinforcing the operations that will help prevent the misuse of digital assets.

According to the filing, $3 million are expected to be spent on information technology specialist compensation, $6 million –– on hardware and software, and $23 million –– to pay contractors.

With this funding, the regulator would hire crypto and cybersecurity experts, build a dashboard dedicated to blockchain analytics for internal use named STRIKES, seek help from private crypto analytics, cybercrime, forensics, accounting, and investigation firms. The IRS would use those newly gained resources to ensure compliance both in tax and non-tax matters where cryptocurrencies are involved.

Read also: US Senator Cynthia Lummis Asks Followers To Share Bitcoin Success Stories After Public Endorsement Of Cryptocurrency

STRIKES is already in development by an external contractor hired by the IRS Criminal Investigation division; it aims to combine multiple existing vendor products into one single dashboard.

The regulator expects that this tool will soon be available to its others divisions as well.