IRS Clarifies its Confusing ‘Airdrop’ Cryptocurrency Tax Policy

America’s top tax authority, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), has somewhat provided clarification about its recent cryptocurrency tax guidelines. However, their final decision regarding taxing promotional airdrops is yet to be made.

Critics pointed out a range of potential problems with the latest guidelines, issued in October.

Perhaps most glaring among these issues was a section about “airdrops” – which, in the world of cryptocurrencies, is usually used to refer to promotional giveaways or customer rewards.

However, as previously reported, the IRS seems to have used this term to refer to hard forks – situations where a blockchain splits, sometimes meaning that token holders receive holdings in a new cryptocurrency.

Per Bloomberg Tax, Christopher Wrobel, an attorney in the IRS Office of the Associate Chief Counsel (Income Tax and Accounting) confirmed that while hard fork-generated revenues are taxable under the latest rulings, the revenue…