IRS obsoletes more old guidance

• Key insight: See why the IRS is eliminating 71 of its previously published tax guidance documents.
• What's at stake: Third-party payment platforms and clean energy projects navigating the sudden removal of federal rules.
• Forward look: Watch for agency heads to identify more regulations and guidance documents to be eliminated.

The Internal Revenue Service is eliminating more of its old guidance in response to an executive order from President Trump, scrapping 71 revenue rulings, revenue procedures, notices and announcements previously published in the Internal Revenue Bulletin.

Early in his presidency, Trump signed Executive Order 14192, Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation on Jan 31, 2025, directing federal agencies like the IRS to identify 10 existing regulations to be repealed for each regulation publicly proposed for notice and comment or otherwise promulgated. Another early Executive Order 14219, Ensuring Lawful Governance and Implementing the President's 'Department of Government Efficiency' Deregulatory Initiative, signed Feb. 19, 2025, directs agency heads to identify regulations and other guidance documents to be eliminated.

In keeping with those executive orders, last year, the Treasury Department and the IRS obsoleted 83 pieces of old guidance and now have targeted more old guidance documents for elimination in Notice 2026-58, released Tuesday. Among them are provisions in the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, a law passed during the Biden administration when Democrats were in power in the White House and Congress. The ARPA included provisions lowering the threshold for Form 1099-K reporting of payment card and third-party network transactions with services such as Airbnb, eBay, Venmo, PayPal, Etsy and more to $600 and any number of transactions from the previous threshold of $20,000 and 200 transactions. That requirement drew controversy, and the IRS repeatedly delayed and phased in the lower threshold. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act that Republicans passed last year eliminated the $600 threshold and restored the $20,000 threshold, allowing the IRS to jettison the guidance it had produced for the lower threshold.

The Trump administration has also been notably skeptical of the clean energy and environmental efforts of previous administrations, and the newly scrapped regulations include several such provisions, such as 2008 guidance involving Qualified Forestry Conservation Bonds, 2007 guidance on changes of address for clean renewable energy bonds, and applications from cooperative electrical companies for authority to issue new clean renewable energy bonds, all of which were superseded by changes under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 passed under the first Trump administration.

Other pieces of guidance targeted for elimination pertain to an old windfall profit tax levied against oil companies, as well as interest on church bonds, passive losses and tax shelter registration, changes in withholding on gambling winnings, business expenses for environmental remediation costs, and for the costs incurred to replace underground storage tanks containing waste products, employee stock ownership plans and more.

Introductory bullet points created by AI with editorial review.