CRYPTO TAX RULES SET UP NEW POLICY BRAWL: “Tax rules for crypto exchanges have finally arrived, and some of the digital asset industry’s top allies in Washington think they’re a mess,” our Sam Sutton reports. — “Treasury on Friday proposed to set major new reporting requirements for exchanges and brokers that provide the trading infrastructure for crypto’s $1 trillion market. Sales would have to be disclosed to the IRS and some service providers would also be covered. The proposal exempts digital asset mining businesses if they aren’t also engaged in trading.” — “House Financial Services Chair Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) called the notice of proposed rulemaking ‘another front in the Biden Administration’s ongoing attack on the digital asset ecosystem,’ in a statement.” — “The fight over how the federal government will tax crypto trades has preoccupied Washington policymakers for years. The latest proposal from Treasury stems from a provision included in the 2021 infrastructure law that ignited a battle between industry lobbyists, grassroots crypto enthusiasts and watchdog groups over what businesses in the industry should be required to provide the government with information about their customers’ holdings and investment activity. The lobbying around the rulemaking process will likely be equally intense.” GREENS NUDGE CALIFORNIA UTILITY TO LEAVE TRADE GROUP: Twenty environmental groups on Thursday urged California’s largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, to leave the American Gas Association over the trade association’s stances on decarbonization, our colleagues over at Morning Energy report. — “Led by Earthjustice and the Sierra Club California, the groups contended in a letter that AGA’s actions “do not align with PG&E’s values” and urged the utility to follow the lead of New England utility Eversource, which left the AGA last year over the association’s positions on climate issues. — “Eversource’s decision to leave AGA is proof that a major gas service provider can continue to safely and responsibly continue its operations without supporting climate obstruction by the American Gas Association,” the groups wrote, pointing out that PG&E quit the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in 2009 for casting doubt on climate change science. — In a statement, PG&E spokesperson Jason King called AGA a “critical partner” that allows the company to collaborate with other member utilities on safety, reliability and the future of natural gas. AGA did not respond to a request for comment. THE TIKTOK CONUNDRUM: For POLITICO Magazine, Nancy Scola delves into the intensifying interest among political operatives in harnessing the power of TikTok creators to tap into the elusive younger electorate — despite the video platform’s ban on paid political ads and the looming threat of a ban on the app altogether. — “In interviews with nearly two dozen digital consultants, political aides and voter mobilization experts, mostly but not exclusively Democrats, sources took me inside the quietly booming campaign ecosystem that is spreading on the app and that has become crucially important in connecting with voters of color,” she writes. — “These strategists aren’t turning to TikTok just for brand-building, messaging and mobilizing on behalf of candidates and causes, but for establishing trust and combatting disinformation, which have proven to be particular challenges in connecting with these voters in recent years.” — “But TikTok is also in serious jeopardy. Many critics fear that the Chinese Communist Party has unacceptable influence over TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, that it could use to, say, extract Americans’ data from the app or tweak its powerful algorithm to negatively influence public opinion. And many in Washington on both sides of the aisle find TikTok’s defense … unconvincing. — “If TikTok is banned, young people won’t just be losing out on a place to participate in the latest viral dance challenge, share anthropological memes about the ways we live today … Both political parties will be losing out on a chance to connect with voters who are notoriously hard to turn out — and whose influence in politics is already hamstrung by restrictive voting rules and gerrymandering, which have been shown to have a disparate impact on minority voters.” WHOOPSIES: “The head of a Supreme Court ‘transparency’ watchdog helping to spearhead a campaign alleging ethics violations among justices, including Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, admitted his group failed to disclose its own lobbying,” per the Washington Examiner’s Gabe Kaminsky. — “Tax attorneys told the Washington Examiner in July it appeared that Fix the Court, a charity formerly a project of New Venture Fund, a liberal nonprofit group managed by the dark money organization and for-profit consultancy Arabella Advisors, likely skirted federal law in 2021 and 2022 due to not reporting activities on financial disclosures that constitute grassroots lobbying.” — In a podcast interview released Wednesday, Fix the Court executive director Gabe Roth said he’d been mistaken about the rules for nonprofit disclosures of grassroots lobbying activities. “So yeah, my confusion was I didn’t hire lobbyists, so like, why does the IRS care how much time I spend?” the executive director told attorney David Lat in an interview on his podcast Original Jurisdiction. “But turns out they do. I have been corrected, and that’s being worked on as we speak.” — But Roth defended his group’s criticism of Thomas and Alito, who recent reports have shown failed to disclose gifts and trips they accepted from wealthy businessmen over decades, even as he conceded the “irony” of Fix the Court’s flawed disclosures. — “‘When Fix the Court was part of New Venture Fund, I never had to fill out these forms,’ Roth said, ‘and this is really my first time doing it, and at first, I didn’t get help, which, again, was the wrong idea. I think if you’re a justice, and you’ve been a justice for five years, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, you don’t have an excuse because you have done this every year, No. 1.’”
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