Don Fort was quoted in a recent Tax Notes article entitled “IRS Leverages Technology Tools to Find Taxpayers’ Cryptocurrency,” published on January 12, 2022. The article includes comments made by Fort and other participants during a January 11th webinar sponsored by the Federal Bar Association Section on Taxation and Eversheds Sutherland (US) LLP entitled “Cryptocurrency Update.”
The article notes:
Don Fort of Kostelanetz & Fink LLP said the IRS’s internal collaborations on cryptocurrency — many directed by OFE — are especially important because traditional audit and investigation techniques might not find those assets and transactions. “So that’s why the education of the entire workforce, particularly the compliance personnel that are on the front lines, that everybody knows something about crypto even though they think they don’t need to. It’s going to become more and more relevant,” he added.
Fort, a former CI chief, also praised the IRS’s efforts to work with private companies doing cryptocurrency tracing work.
Criminal tax investigations generally take about two years, and cryptocurrency can make them take even longer, according to Fort. CI has been devoting lots of time and resources to those cases, he added.
And while announcements of pure cryptocurrency criminal tax enforcement actions have been sparse so far, according to Fort and Schenck, the tax community can expect to see more relatively soon.
Fort noted that taxpayers considering how to address prior cryptocurrency tax noncompliance have three basic options: voluntary disclosure using the IRS’s guidelines on reporting willful noncompliance, quietly amending prior returns or filing delinquent returns, and doing nothing.
Click here to read the full article.
