TRM Talks: Internal Revenue Service's Role in Crypto with IRS Crypto Lead Raj Mukherjee

In this episode of TRM Talks, Ari Redbord, TRM's Global Head of Policy sits down with Raj Mukherjee, Executive Director for the Office of Digital Assets Initiative at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to discuss Raj’s journey from industry to government, the role of the IRS in the crypto space, and how the IRS approached drafting the recently published broker regulations.

Key Takeaways

• Tax authorities play a critical role in shaping policy and regulation in the crypto space.
• Public-Private partnerships and conversation is more important than ever as we build regulatory frameworks for crypto and is personified by Raj’s journey from industry to IRS.
• We are seeing a whole of Treasury approach at IRS on digital assets. From IRS-Criminal Investigation to counsel’s office, the office Small Business Self-Employed (SBSE) to the office of Large Business and International (LB&I) IRS is leveraging expertise from across the service to navigate the crypto space.

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About Raj Mukherjee

Sulolit “Raj” Mukherjee hired at Internal Revenue Service in February 2024 as the Executive Director, Compliance & Implementation for the Office of Digital Asset Initiative (DAI). The DAI serves as a Program Office that will help IRS set consistent, global digital asset strategy, including internal IRS procedure and policy. He brings significant industry expertise to his position.

He is particularly experienced in building global tax program from ground zero and executing pragmatic strategies that meet regulatory muster and budget parameters.

Formerly, he led the global tax function at ConsenSys and its foreign subsidiaries. In this role, he managed all the firm’s tax functions including tax policy, corporate tax compliance, international tax, M&A and customer reporting. He also served as ConsenSys' tax policy representative in Washington DC because of his extensive knowhow in liaising with governing agencies and industry to help clarify tax regulations int he digital asset space. Previously, he was the Head of Tax & Tax Information Reporting at two digital asset currency exchanges including Coinbase where he oversaw creation of end-to-end tax compliance functions and served as the lead executive focused on emerging US and global tax & regulatory obligations for digital assets. He partnered with Legal, Technology and Business leadership to assess risks to the firm and mitigate those risks through pragmatic & executable enhancements and controls.

Raj came to the digital assets world after leading tax advisory functions for investment banks in NYC for over a decade focusing on U.S. and global tax information reporting, FATCA, NRA, 871(m) and Common Reporting Standard (CRS). Raj has a J.D from University of Kansas School of Law, and B.A. degrees inInternational Relations and English Literature from Washington College in the state of Maryland.