In a bid to fight the threat of cryptocurrency tax crime, the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has joined with tax authorities from Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom to form the Joint Chiefs of Global Tax Enforcement (J5), according to a press release.
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The J5 is a response to a request[2] by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for countries to do more to tackle tax evaders.
The new task force, which would work collaboratively with the OECD where appropriate, believes "offshore structures and financial instruments" when used to launder money and commit tax crimes could be detrimental to a country's economic well-being.
The coalition, which includes the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) and Australian Taxation Office (ATO), the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), the Fiscale Inlichtingen- en Opsporingsdienst (FIOD) of the Netherlands, HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) of the U.K., and the U.S. Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) will gather intelligence and "collaborate internationally to reduce the growing threat to tax administrations posed by cryptocurrencies and cybercrime."
IRS Chief of Criminal Investigation Don Fort explained[3] in a Forbes interview why the U.S. decided to take an international approach to fighting cryptocurrency-related tax crimes. He iterated that the U.S. has tried the one-man army approach in the past, but it wasn't successful.
"We cannot continue to operate in the same ways we have in the past, siloing our information from the rest of the world while organized criminals and tax cheats manipulate the system and exploit vulnerabilities for their personal gain," he remarked. With the J5 task force, Fort hopes the IRS will be strong enough to "pressurize the global criminal community” in ways it couldn't make work in the past.
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