Kraken will share data of 42,000 users with IRS

United States-based exchange Kraken says it will share 42,000 users’ data with the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in compliance with a court order. The information will be sent to the IRS in early November. 

On its support page, Kraken specifies that the summons to produce “a wide range of records and data” on its U.S. clients and pass it to the IRS came in a court order from the Northern District of California in May 2021. The company objected to the IRS’s demands and fought the summons in court, convincing it to “substantially reduce” the number of clients affected and the amount of client data.

The court ordered Kraken to present profile and transaction data for clients who exceeded $20,000 in transactions during any single year from 2016 to 2020. That also includes those who made no transactions but deposits and withdrawals.

Related: IRS proposes unprecedented data-collection on crypto users

Kraken will share such data as name, date of birth, tax ID, address, contact information and transaction history of these customers. Reportedly, there will be around 42,000 accounts whose information will get sent to the IRS.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit is reviewing another case where the IRS demanded users’ data from a crypto exchange. In 2018, Coinbase told the 13,000 affected customers that it would provide their taxpayer ID, name, birth date, address, and historical transaction records from 2013-2015 to the IRS.

One of these users, James Harper, appealed against the IRS to prevent the U.S. government from having unfettered access to a user’s transaction history. In October 2023, cryptocurrency advocacy group the DeFi Education Fund (DEF) filed an amicus brief supporting Harper’s appeal.

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