According to the head of the agency's criminal investigations department, the IRS may confiscate billions of dollars worth of cryptocurrencies related to tax fraud and other crimes next year.
Based on the IRS's annual criminal investigation report published yesterday, the IRS confiscated $ 3.5 billion worth of cryptocurrency during this year, which is almost 93% of all assets confiscated by the tax authorities this year.
IRS Chief of Criminal Investigations Jim Lee said: "I expect that the trend of cryptocurrency withdrawal will continue as we move towards the 22nd fiscal year. As we move forward, we see that cryptocurrency has been used in a number of crimes."
Last year, the IRS unit confiscated billions of dollars worth of bitcoins and other virtual coins related to cases involving a number of criminal activities, such as electronic fraud, money laundering, drug distribution, and tax fraud. This includes $1 billion stolen from SilkRoad, an online bitcoin exchange that was shut down in 2013.
This division also brought to justice a former Microsoft Corp software developer who used cryptocurrency to hide $10 million that he embezzled from the company.
The report of the Criminal investigation unit says: "Prioritizes the training and deployment of cryptocurrency, blockchain and open-source intelligence (OSINT) technologies to uncover complex cyber-financial criminal schemes."
To further advance these efforts, the division is opening an Advanced Collaboration and Data Center in Northern Virginia in 2022.
Congress recently granted the IRS more opportunities to monitor cryptocurrency transactions in an infrastructure package signed by President Joe Biden on Monday. This law will require cryptocurrency brokers to track transactions and report them to the IRS so that tax authorities receive more information about transactions with virtual currency.
The agency could also receive an additional $80 billion in funding, which Democrats are proposing in Biden's Build Back Better plan, which could get a vote in the House of Representatives as early as Thursday. Jim Lee said his unit desperately needs the money to hire 250-300 more special agents, as well as invest in detection and tracking systems.