A branch of the California District Court has granted the American tax collecting body, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), permission to issue a John Doe summons on the crypto exchange giant Kraken – in a bid to discover the identities of United States residents and citizens who have conducted high-value crypto transactions in the past four years.
The IRS is known to have been hoping to gain a favorable court ruling for several weeks, if not months. The move follows a warning last month from a tax expert – who wrote, prophetically: “Guys, file your crypto taxes. The IRS is coming” – after the tax body won the right to issue a John Doe summons on Circle.
A John Doe summons, in the IRS’ own words, permits the tax body to “obtain the names, requested information and documents concerning all taxpayers in a certain group.”
Per an official release from the American Department of Justice (DoJ), the IRS now has the power to force Kraken to reveal information about United States taxpayer customers who conducted USD 20,000 or more worth of crypto transactions in the period 2016 to 2020.
In the release, David Hubbert, the acting Assistant Attorney-General of the Justice Department tax division, stated:
