Two Execs Join IRS as Crypto Advisors

The Internal Revenue Service has hired two private-sector experts to help the agency’s enforcement efforts for cryptocurrency and other digital assets.

Sulolit “Raj” Mukherjee, and Seth Wilks, CPA, have been hired as executive advisors.

“This is a complex and evolving sector that has major tax administration implications,” said IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel in a statement. “It’s important we get this right for taxpayers and the nation. Pulling in expertise from the private sector to work with the IRS team is critical to successfully building the agency’s efforts involving digital assets and helping us do it in a way that works well for everyone.”

Mukherjee has been a tax executive for more than 10 years in tax compliance and tax information reporting for financial institutions and has extensive experience in the crypto industry, the IRS said.

Mukherjee joins the IRS from a private blockchain software technology company where he served as global head of tax.

Wilks worked in the digital asset tax policy space for the past six years.

Wilks has also worked extensively with tax compliance and planning issues related to multinational corporations and manufacturing, with a focus on complex supply chains, transfer pricing and cross-border transactions, the IRS explained.

“Seth and Raj expand our ability to understand this sector while designing systems for reporting of cryptocurrency and digital assets and related transactions,” Doug O’Donnell, IRS deputy commissioner, services and enforcement, said in the statement. “Improving employee capacity and access to tools in this rapidly evolving global landscape is a top IRS priority.”

With funding from the Inflation Reduction Act expanded work on digital assets is one of the priority areas where the IRS will focus, including work through the John Doe summons effort and the release of proposed regulations of broker reporting in August 2023.

Everyone who files Forms 1040, 1040-SR, 1040-NR, 1041, 1065, 1120, 1120 and 1120S must check one box answering either “Yes” or “No” to the digital asset question, the IRS said.