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Boosted by kornel ("Kornel"):
molly0xfff@hachyderm.io ("Molly White") wrote:

Crypto firms are lobbying Trump for tax carveouts. Meanwhile, a new 501(c)(3) they back hosted a private dinner with tax lawmakers — despite rules against “substantial” lobbying. Purely educational, of course.

#crypto #cryptocurrency #USpol #USpolitics #CitationNeededNewsletter

In elections and political influence As the market structure bill plods along, the crypto industry is already eyeing its next punchlist item: tax policy. The Solana Policy Institute penned a letter to President Trump on November 20 urging him to “promote tax clarity for the digital asset economy and American people”, including by creating a de minimis exemption for crypto transactions below $600, making blockchain development eligible for the research and development tax credit, and delaying rules that would require digital asset transactions be reported to the IRS and FinCEN in the same way as cash. The letter also included other requests that the president could achieve with the “stroke of a pen”41 — that is, without needing to go through Congress — including creating defi “safe harbors and sandboxes”, pressuring the SEC and CFTC to create exemptions for crypto, directing FinCEN to carve out non-custodial crypto projects from the Bank Secrecy Act,e and pushing the Justice Department to dismiss the two remaining charges against Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm [I90]. The letter was signed by 62 crypto groups, including Paradigm, various Solana entities, Uniswap, and others.42
Days earlier, the American Innovation Project, an “educational nonprofit” launched in August with backing from the Solana Policy Institute, Paradigm, Kraken, Coinbase, Andreessen Horowitz, DCG, Uniswap, and the Cedar Innovation Foundation pro-crypto dark money group [I91] hosted a private dinner with members of the House Ways and Means Committee and various other pro-crypto Congresspeople to discuss crypto tax policy. As a 501(c)(3), the AIP is prohibited from making a “substantial part of its activities ... attempting to influence legislation”.43 But while many of the AIP’s same backers have directly lobbied President Trump, and the Solana Policy Institute, Paradigm, and Kraken have spent a combined $5.25 million on lobbying around crypto tax issues since 2024,44 the AIP insists that the dinner was purely educational.41