Markets Insider Quotes Arshi Siddiqui on New Tax Law

For its article “Companies like Etsy, eBay, and PayPal are fighting a new tax law they fear could lead to an avalanche of 40 million new tax forms and mass confusion among their users,” Business Insider quoted Akin Gump public law and policy partner Arshi Siddiqui. The article looks at a new tax law that would lower the income tax reporting threshold on digital transactions from $20,000 to $600.

Siddiqui, along with Akin Gump, is representing The Coalition for 1099-K Fairness, which, the article notes, was formed in response to the American Rescue Plan Act and its lowering of tax-reporting thresholds for digital transactions; the Coalition includes companies such as PayPal and Airbnb.

She said that companies fighting the new lower threshold understand and support the need to close the tax gap, adding “The fact of the matter was, though, that the swing between $20,000 and 200 transactions all the way down to $600 and one transaction, it was pretty drastic.”

Siddiqui said that the Coalition would continue discussions with lawmakers this year—Republicans would likely support returning to the $20K figure, while the last Democrat-controlled Congress, Siddiqui said, seemed supportive of raising the threshold to $5,000.

She noted that, across the political spectrum, “[T]here was a lot of support for making sure that casual sellers on online platforms and micro-businesses weren't inadvertently caught up in this web of compliance and confusion.”