IRS PUNTS ON GIG TAX: The IRS on Friday said it will grant a one-year reprieve to gig workers and small sellers facing new tax reporting requirements after a push to address the issue in the omnibus spending package fell short this week, per The Wall Street Journal’s Laura Saunders and Richard Rubin. — “The delay means the platforms won’t have to send sellers and the IRS a blizzard of 1099-K tax forms early in 2023, and it gives opponents of the $600 threshold more time to push for a change in the law next year. ‘The additional time will help reduce confusion during the coming 2023 tax filing season and provide more time for taxpayers to prepare and understand the new reporting requirements,’ said Acting IRS Commissioner Doug O’Donnell.” — Democrats’ Covid relief package in 2021 lowered the 1099-K threshold — which requires platforms to report information about users exceeding certain revenues to the IRS — from $20,000. The bill also did away with a 200-transaction minimum in the reporting requirements. — The changes were set to go into effect next year, and a coalition of platforms including eBay, Airbnb, Block, Etsy, Mercari, PayPal, Poshmark, Rover, StubHub and more mounted a lobbying campaign earlier this year seeking to raise the threshold. The companies argued that the new reporting standards could saddle even the most casual sellers with additional tax paperwork or spook sellers from their platforms by asking for their Social Security number in order for companies to produce the 1099-K forms. — The omnibus released this week left the threshold untouched, prompting a last-minute lobbying blitz and bipartisan efforts to secure a vote on an amendment to either raise the reporting threshold or delay its implementation. Those efforts fizzled amid gridlock over a broader tax title, leaving advocates to turn their efforts to the IRS, said Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld’s Arshi Siddiqui, the head of the Coalition for 1099-K Fairness. — The American Institute of CPAs , which wrote to congressional leaders last week to express “deep concerns” with the new reporting threshold, called the delay “the right move for taxpayers, tax practitioners and for the IRS.” — Though AICPA President Barry Melancon said in a statement the delay “will both allow taxpayers to better understand and comply with the law and allow the IRS sufficient time to prepare for the implementation,” he nevertheless urged lawmakers to “strongly consider previous recommendations to raise the threshold.” CHECK THAT LIST TWICE: “Megadonor and disgraced crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried burrowed his campaign cash so deep into the Democratic Party that lawmakers are now preparing internal investigations to be sure they’re rid of it — and prepared for any potential restitution to victims of Bankman-Fried’s crimes,” Rolling Stone’s Kara Voght reports. — “The campaign of Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) is currently conducting an internal assessment of any donations it may have received from political or professional associates of Bankman-Fried. Once those donations have been identified, the Torres campaign will set them aside for a fund it expects the Justice Department will set up to compensate the victims of the fallen crypto magnate’[s] crimes.” — “Bankman-Fried had individually donated to dozens of political candidates and committees as well as funneled millions of dollars to a pair of political action committees run by his brother, Gabe Bankman-Fried.” — “Democrats, the chief beneficiaries of Bankman-Fried’s stolen largess, have been scrambling to rinse themselves of any lingering ties to the disgraced crypto mogul. What they’re learning, however, is that there will be no swift recovery from what’s quickly becoming one of the most explosive campaign finance scandals in recent memory. SBF’s straw donor allegations have a long, murky, tail — and campaigns who may have been on the receiving end of it are bracing for a messy investigation.” TIKTOK’S BAD WEEK CONTINUES: As a ban on the video sharing platform on government devices heads to President Joe Biden’s desk, an internal investigation by TikTok parent company ByteDance “found that employees tracked multiple journalists covering the company, improperly gaining access to their IP addresses and user data in an attempt to identify whether they had been in the same locales as ByteDance employees,” reports Forbes' Emily Baker-White, one target of the surveillance. — The company said it had fired multiple executives and staffers involved in the surveillance, but Senate Intelligence Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.) warned in a statement to the magazine that “this new development reinforces serious concerns that the social media platform has permitted TikTok engineers and executives in the People’s Republic of China to repeatedly access private data of U.S. users despite repeated claims to lawmakers and users that this data was protected.” — Warner also swiped at federal agencies working to address potential vulnerabilities. “The DoJ has also been promising for over a year that they are looking into ways to protect U.S. user data from Bytedance and the CCP — it’s time to come forward with that solution or Congress could soon be forced to step in,” he said. TWITTER GUTS PUBLIC POLICY TEAM: Reuters’ Fanny Potkin and Paresh Dave report that Twitter’s public policy chief “has left the company amid additional layoffs to the unit on Thursday, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, as billionaire owner Elon Musk continues to slash costs.” — “Sinead McSweeney, global vice president for public policy, has left Twitter, according to two sources.” McSweeney will be replaced by senior director for global public policy strategy Nick Pickles , according to the outlet, while one staffer who was laid off wrote that half of the remaining public policy team had been cut.
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