Kraken to Congress: stop taxing every coffee and fix staking rules

Kraken says it filed 56m 2025 crypto tax forms, most under $50, and is urging Congress to create a de minimis exemption and let users defer tax on staking rewards until sale.

Kraken is using this tax season to put hard numbers behind a long‑running complaint: the US treats trivial crypto transactions like serious taxable events.

According to figures shared with CoinDesk and outlined in its US tax center materials, Kraken generated roughly 56 million crypto transaction tax forms for the 2025 tax year under new Infrastructure Act reporting rules.

The kicker is the distribution. Kraken says about 18.5 million of those transactions — roughly one‑third — involved amounts under $1, around 74% were for trades or payments under $50, and only 8.5% exceeded the $600 reporting threshold that normally triggers IRS information returns like Form 1099‑MISC.

Under current IRS guidance, each swap or spend is potentially a taxable event, regardless of size.
Kraken’s own tax guide notes that “most crypto activities are treated as either ordinary income or a capital gain,” and that trading, NFT purchases, staking rewards, and airdrops “are not tax exempt,” forcing users to track cost basis and fair market value even for micro‑purchases.

Kraken is now asking Congress to step in.

The exchange is calling for a statutory de minimis exemption on everyday crypto payments — essentially a minimum dollar amount beneath which gains and losses would not be taxable — and wants that threshold indexed to inflation so it doesn’t erode over time.

At the same time, Kraken wants lawmakers to fix what it sees as a broken approach to staking rewards.
Revenue Ruling 2023‑14 currently requires taxpayers to include staking rewards in gross income when they gain “dominion and control,” i.e., at the moment they’re credited, even if the holder doesn’t sell tokens and the price later dumps.

Kraken argues that rule both complicates reporting and creates mismatches between paper income and actual liquidity. It is asking Congress to let taxpayers elect between two options: treat staking rewards as ordinary income at receipt (the status quo) or defer recognition until sale, effectively taxing them as part of capital gains when the position is exited.

Practically, the exchange says, this would align US policy more closely with how staking works in DeFi and on centralized platforms like Kraken, where rewards accrue continuously and are often re‑staked rather than cashed out. Unless Congress moves, though, US users face another year where buying a sandwich with crypto generates a line item for the IRS — and staking into a validator can mean owing tax on tokens they never sold.