Coinbase, the San Francisco-headquartered bitcoin exchange on Friday, November 10th updated users regarding its IRS situation. Back in the Fall of 2016, Coinbase was summoned to provide identities and records of U.S. users and accounts but has fought back against the summons from the beginning.
The company said that on Friday, it appeared in Federal Court to continue fighting for its customer’s privacy rights. As you may recall, the IRS initiated proceedings last year for basically all U.S. customer records for a three year period from 2013-2015. The government never alleged any wrongdoing on the part of Coinbase.
Coinbase says, that in continuing to fight for user privacy, they have already achieved progress. Initially, the government sought the records of 500,000 account holders. In response to the objection, the IRS has reduced the scope of the summons now to approximately 14,000 accounts. On Friday, Coinbase contended that the summons is still unjust and invasive to its customers.
David Farmer, Director of Communications at Coinbase said:
“We were proud to appear in court today, together with support from industry colleagues, to continue to fight against what we believe to be government overreach. In the future, we hope to work with the IRS to establish a reasonable tax reporting method that makes sense for virtual currency service providers and consumers alike.”