The IRS has reversed the requirement for Paypal, Venmo, CashApp, etc. to report if you receive more than $600 – for now. Now it starts in 2023. It was just about this time last year we told you how the IRS was requiring Paypal, Venmo, CashApp, Zelle, and other cash payment apps (technically known as third-party settlement organizations, or TPSOs) to file a 1099 for you with the IRS if you received payments totaling more than $600 (it had been $20,000, so that’s quite a substantial drop). Now the IRS has said “Psych! It really starts next year.” So, once again, unless you took in $20,000 or more in 2022, Paypal et al is not required to file a 1099 with the IRS or to issue you a 1099 (nor likely will they).

A new IRS reporting requirement reduces the amount to trigger reporting of payments made through online and mobile payment apps from $20,000 to $600 in a calendar year. Previously, under the tax law, you had to reach a $20,000 (twenty-thousand dollar) threshold before Paypal and other payment services were required to issue you a 1099-K. Now if you run more than $600 through Paypal, Venmo, Cash App, Zelle, or any other payment service, that service is required to issue you the 1099-K, which of course is also provided to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

The number of scam calls claiming to be from either the IRS or the Social Security Administration (SSA), and claiming that they have found “suspicious activity” with your SSN, and that they are going to “suspend your social security number” seems to have skyrocketed in the past month. They come from all sorts of phone numbers (some included below), but they all seem to carry the same message.

There is a new scam featuring the phone number 202-599-9670. So far, the call is coming from 710-201-2246.

As tax time looms, the IRS has set forth rules about whether they will treat (and so you should treat) Bitcoins and other virtual currency as, well, currency, or property, for tax purposes. The short answer is that the IRS will treat virtual currency such as Bitcoin as property for tax purposes. Here is a more full explanation.