The US Internal Revenue Service has obtained the release of the data of users of the Kraken exchange

A federal court has allowed the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to send requests to the Kraken cryptocurrency exchange for the release of its customer data.

The agency is interested in users whose transactions on the platform for the period from 2016 to 2020 exceed $20,000. The measure is aimed at identifying taxpayers "who could not comply with domestic tax legislation." At the same time, Kraken itself is not accused of any offenses, the Ministry of Justice notes in a press release.

"This is part of our work to identify individuals who are trying to evade reporting and avoid paying the tax owed to them," IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig said in a statement.

"Those who carry out transactions with cryptocurrencies should fulfill their tax obligations just like any other taxpayers," added David Hubbert, Assistant Prosecutor for the Tax Division of the Ministry of Justice.

The IRS is interested in several classes of taxpayers, for example, those who have declared limited income despite the volume of transactions with cryptocurrencies from $5 million to $6 million, or those who use multiple accounts to exchange between traditional currency and digital without obvious economic benefits.

In April, the court issued a similar order against the crypto-payment company Circle and the Poloniex exchange, which it owned in the past. The IRS began to be interested in cryptocurrency holders back in 2016, when it managed to obtain the data of 13,000 users of the Coinbase exchange.