Kraken, a cryptocurrency exchange, has filed 56 million forms with the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for the 2025 tax year, with approximately 18.5 million of these forms covering transactions valued at less than $1 and over half for $10 or less. Only 8.5% of the new Form 1099-DAs exceeded the $600 threshold, which triggers reporting for non-employee compensation, while 74% were for less than $50.
Each form is also sent to the customer, creating a reconciliation task for the taxpayer. The company estimates that the additional burden on active cryptocurrency holders is around $250-$500 per year for specialized tax software, on top of standard filing costs. Kraken argues that the time spent by taxpayers on reconciling these micro-transactions, often with incomplete data, generates costs that are disproportionate to any revenue the IRS will collect.
The Tax Foundation estimates that individual returns already cost Americans a combined $146 billion in time and expenses. The main issues stem from the lack of a de minimis exemption for cryptocurrency payments and the treatment of staking rewards as ordinary income at the moment of receipt. Kraken is advocating for a broader inflation-indexed exemption and the option for taxpayers to choose when staking rewards are taxed, either at receipt or at sale.