An Overview of the Bill
The $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill is big news and for good reason. This 2,702-page legislation includes $550 billion in new federal investment in America’s infrastructure with promises to, ”grow the economy, enhance our competitiveness, create good jobs, and make our economy more sustainable, resilient, and just,” in the words of a Whitehouse press release.
The bill provides for investment in public transit, passenger rail, bridges and interstate highways. Additionally, it allows for delivery of clean water to millions of families, and works to give every American access to reliable high-speed internet. It also looks at the climate crisis and invests in clean energy transmissions including the Electronic Vehicle (EV) structure. This list is an overview and does not touch on all details of the infrastructure bill, but gives a good general direction.
To offset the cost, the bill proposes repurposing $205 billion of certain unused COVID relief dollars, recouping fraudulently paid benefits from enhanced federal UI supplement, $49 billion from delaying Medicare Part D rebate rule, $20 billion from sales of future spectrum auctions and $67 billion from proceeds from proceeds of the February 2021 c-band auction.
It calls for $56 billion in economic growth resulting from a 33% return on investment in these long-term infrastructure projects…on and on.
Of particular interest to the Crypto Community…
is the $30 billion from applying information reporting requirements to cryptocurrency.
The provision pushes for more cryptocurrency regulation by imposing additional reporting requirements and stricter rules regarding tax collection on digital assets. The provision defines a “broker” as “any person who (for consideration) is responsible for regularly providing any service effectuating transfers of digital assets on behalf of another person”. In short, the bill calls for reporting rules similar to those governing the sale of stocks and other securities with brokers reporting things like how much people paid for cryptocurrencies.
An additional reporting requirement would be for businesses who transact in amounts of $10,000 or more. For example, if you are a business and a client pays your $10,000 invoice in cryptocurrency, you would need to file a Large Transactions Report similar to the ones now used for cash transactions.
Some members of the crypto community are still worried that the broker definition is still too broad. Their fear is that the bill puts new reporting requirements on individual players in the industry who have no way to comply.
While many in the industry are eager to see updated guidance for exchanges, there is still a pervasive opinion that the language in the infrastructure bill cryptocurrency provision is too broad.
So what happens next?
The Senate needs to vote on amendments to the bill. This leaves some room for further revisions and refinement.
The Majority Leader hopes to pass the plan before the chamber leaves for its recess next week. The bill, however, could take a while to get to the President’s desk because the House is not scheduled to return to Washington until September 20th.