LOT TO CATCH UP ON: If you decided to essentially check out on tax news a couple days before Christmas — well, you missed a lot. The Democrats' release of former President Donald Trump's tax returns last week was front page news around the country. But there have been lots of other tax developments in the last week and a half, too — a trickling out of some guidance for the tax provisions from last year's Inflation Reduction Act, and an announcement that regulations for new cryptocurrency reporting requirements might still be awhile. And then there was this, all the way back on Dec. 23: The IRS took matters into its own hands and delayed the new thresholds that would have led to millions more taxpayers receiving tax forms for sales on platforms like eBay or payments made through Venmo. That means that taxpayers will still have had to rack up $20,000 in at least 200 separate transactions during 2022 to receive a 1099-K form — not the far lower $600, in any number of transactions, that Democrats put into place as part of their 2021 coronavirus response. Let's just say that the IRS's decision raised some questions. For starters, what authority did the tax collector have to delay the new 1099-K requirements? The agency's release said it was offering transitional relief, which is essentially what people told Morning Tax beforehand might happen. But experts like Daniel Hemel of New York University's law school and Steve Rosenthal of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center say that nothing in the tax law gives the IRS the specific power to delay the new rules. BACK TO ALL THAT IN A BIT, but first — happy New Year, everyone. Since it's going to be a big day there: Today marks 183 years since the birth of Father Damien in Belgium, whose work treating victims of leprosy in Hawaii led to him being honored with a statue on the first floor in the Capitol. Tell us what's going on in that and other important buildings. Email: bbecker@politico.com, bfaler@politico.com, bguggenheim@politico.com and teckert@politico.com. You can also reach us on Twitter at @berniebecker3, @tobyeckert, @brian_faler, @ben_guggenheim, @POLITICOPro and @Morning_Tax. Want to receive this newsletter every weekday? Subscribe to POLITICO Pro. You'll also receive daily policy news and other intelligence you need to act on the day's biggest stories. LET'S KEEP TALKING 1099-K: What's working in the IRS's favor here is that no one's really complaining. A bipartisan effort to push back the requirements for a year or two didn't make the cut in the omnibus bill. So the extra year gives lawmakers further time to head off a situation that lots of people worried would cause some havoc in the upcoming tax filing season. (Clearly, the IRS had its worries about how things would go.) Though it's also worth noting: Some Republicans wouldn't have been too upset if there was no delay, thinking that Democrats would have to own any upheaval in the filing season. Which leads to another question: How or when might lawmakers offer relief on the 1099-K thresholds? Looking big picture, there are some broader questions for Congress to work out. Should the threshold stay at $20,000 permanently? That's something a fair number of Republicans want, while there has been bipartisan interest in compromise figures like $5,000 and $10,000. The good thing is they'll likely have a fair bit of time to figure it all out. Actual lawmaking is about to get much more sluggish in Washington, with divided government back and lots of eyes on how a possibly combustible incoming GOP majority will lead the House. Something like fiddling with the 1099-K thresholds generally hitches a ride on larger legislative vehicles, and the deadline for the next must-pass bill isn't for another nine months, when government funding runs out. One more possibility to consider: We might have just written that not a ton of laws will be made these next two years — and have definitely suggested that lots of the congressional back-and-forth on taxes in 2023 and 2024 will be setting up for the end of 2025, when the individual tax cuts from the GOP tax law expires. But it's worth wondering whether tax writers will be hunting for another year-end bill at the end of 2023, especially considering very few actual tax provisions passed in this most recent December. Democrats, for instance, could still push for action on expanding the Child Tax Credit, and companies will continue to lobby to bring back immediate expensing for research costs. No guarantees on anything, of course, but that could be another option for congressional action on the 1099-K levels. And a final question: What might the IRS do with this extra year they gave themselves? Keep in mind: Democrats passed this new, much lower $600 threshold more than 21 months ago, and yet there were still plenty of stories in December about the big surprise around the corner for taxpayers. So while the IRS and others are probably hoping that Congress finds some kind of solution over the next year, taxpayer advocates also want the agency to step up its education about the chances that the $600 threshold goes into effect and the impact that might have on their lives. For instance, Nina Olson, the former national taxpayer advocate, wondered whether the IRS might at some point put out guidance for gig workers, like Uber drivers, who would be affected by the changes. HEY, DID ANYTHING ELSE HAPPEN? Democrats rolled out six years of Trump's tax returns on Friday, just in time for the new year. The release raised new questions about the former president's finances, including potential foreign entanglements, as your Morning Tax author and Pro Tax's Benjamin Guggenheim noted. And then there's the issue of just how strong Trump's various businesses were performing, given that his returns show lots of losses over the years. To be fair, we already had some idea about all of that — because of previous tax returns that had been combed through by The New York Times, and an extensive report on these returns compiled by the Joint Committee on Taxation. But there will be other questions to keep considering as well: Like, how much did Trump's signature tax cuts affect his own bottom line? For one thing, his tax returns — like those of many others based in New York — started having only a dash of SALT, as Trump too was hit by the $10,000 cap on state and local deductions. At the same time, Trump also could lean on certain workarounds to the SALT limits, as The Wall Street Journal's Richard Rubin noted.
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