Congress wrote DeFi tax reporting into the code, then outlawed the rule that implements it. Both laws are in force.

The finding, in one paragraph: the United States now runs two permanent, contradictory laws about who must report crypto transactions to the IRS.▸ The first, enacted in the 2021 infrastructure act and still printed in the tax code, defines a reporting broker to include anyone who, for consideration, regularly provides "any service effectuating transfers of digital assets." The second, a one-sentence joint resolution signed in April 2025, declares the regulation implementing that definition for decentralized-finance platforms void — and, by the Congressional Review Act's own terms, forbids the IRS from ever issuing a rule in substantially the same form. This filing season, the asymmetry became operational: custodial exchange customers received the first Form 1099-DAs, their trades matched against their returns, while identical transactions routed through DeFi front-ends generate, by law, nothing.

Five documents, read directly.▸ The statute is IIJA § 80603 (P.L. 117-58), whose broker definition — quoted verbatim above — remains at 26 U.S.C. 6045(c)(1)(D). The nullification is Public Law 119-5 (H.J. Res. 25, approved April 10, 2025): the rule "shall have no force or effect." The erasure is Treasury and the IRS's July 11, 2025 Federal Register document formally removing the rule from the CFR. The case for repeal is the Ways and Means one-pager — DeFi platforms "do not collect the information from users needed to implement this rule." The price is the Joint Committee on Taxation's score in House Report 119-7: $3.9 billion through 2034.

The scores are the tax gap made specific.▸ Third-party reporting is the engine of American tax compliance: where the IRS gets an information return, reported income compliance runs near total; where it gets nothing, noncompliance runs to half or more — the logic on which the 2021 provision was scored at roughly $28 billion. The CRA resolution's $3.9 billion is JCT's estimate of the slice attributable to DeFi-routed transactions, now scored as forgone: not a tax cut anyone legislated, but reporting-dependent revenue that the government has formally chosen not to see.

Hold the two enacted texts against each other.▸ The 2021 statute's subparagraph (D) — added deliberately, over industry objection, after a floor fight that failed to narrow it — reaches "any person who (for consideration) is responsible for regularly providing any service effectuating transfers of digital assets on behalf of another person." The 2025 resolution voids the regulation applying that language to DeFi front-ends, and the Congressional Review Act prohibits reissuing it in "substantially the same form" absent new legislation. Congress has not amended subparagraph (D). The result is a statutory command with a regulatory gag: the tax code, read alone, still says DeFi services are brokers; the agency that would say so in a rule is barred from saying it.

The repeal's stated rationale — that decentralized platforms "do not collect the information from users needed to implement this rule" — is an argument the 2021 Congress heard and rejected when it wrote the definition; the 2025 Congress adopted it without touching the definition.▸ And the enforcement asymmetry this creates is not hypothetical as of this year: TD 10000, the custodial-broker rule, survived — the first 1099-DAs covering 2025 trades reached taxpayers and the IRS this spring, so a coin sold on a custodial exchange is matched, while the same coin sold through a decentralized front-end is legally unreported. Tax liability is identical in both cases; the probability of it being collected now depends on venue — a routing choice the repeal made free.

The custodial regime tightens on schedule: basis reporting joins gross proceeds on the 1099-DA for 2026 transactions, making the matched half of the market fully transparent as the unmatched half stays dark.▸ The first matching-season data — how many custodial crypto discrepancies the IRS pursues with a workforce down a quarter — will show what the surviving rule is worth in practice. Any revival of DeFi reporting requires new legislation amending or reaffirming § 6045, which no pending bill does. And the JCT's $3.9 billion becomes checkable over time, the rare tax-gap number with a legislative signature on it.