NC is building future of digital finance. Federal Tax code needs to keep up.

No one looks forward to tax day. If you’re a North Carolinian who just spent an evening at your computer paying for tax software or writing a check to your accountant, you’re not alone. The average American spends eight hours and at least $128 preparing a federal return. Nationally, taxpayers spend a combined 7.1 billion hours and $464 billion a year just to stay compliant. The tax code is more complicated than it needs to be. But for the roughly one in five Americans who now own a digital asset like Bitcoin or a stablecoin, the burden is not only complicated, it’s often absurd.

That is why North Carolina is moving to modernize its digital asset laws. Last summer, Congress passed the GENIUS Act, the nation’s first regulatory framework for stablecoins, a type of digital currency backed one-to-one by US dollars or Treasury bonds and designed for everyday payments. The law gives states like North Carolina a clear path: Build a certified stablecoin framework aligned with federal standards, and your licensed issuers can operate nationwide.

Florida enacted the nation’s first state framework in March. Alabama followed days later. Delaware introduced comprehensive legislation the same month. North Carolina is not going to be left behind. As co-chair of the House Select Committee on Blockchain and Digital Assets, I am working with colleagues from both parties on stablecoin legislation for our state this session.

We are well positioned to lead. Charlotte is the nation’s second-largest banking center, home to Bank of America, Truist, and Ally Financial among others. North Carolina employs 232,000 financial services professionals and 23,000 fintech workers. The state House already passed the Digital Assets Investment Act (HB 92) with strong bipartisan support. A major stablecoin venture chose Charlotte for its US headquarters precisely because of our financial infrastructure. The committee has been studying blockchain applications for government efficiency and consumer protection since October 2025, and we are building on that foundation now. But getting digital finance right at the state level only matters if the federal tax code does not undermine it.

Here is the problem: Stablecoins are built for payments. Congress regulated them as payment tools. States are building frameworks to make them safe and accessible. But the IRS still treats every stablecoin transaction as a taxable disposition of property, such as selling a bar of gold or vehicle. Buy a plate of BBQ in Lexington with a stablecoin and the IRS expects you to identify exactly which tokens you spent, calculate your cost basis to eight decimal places, determine whether you had a gain or a loss, and report it on Form 8949 and Schedule D. A family paying for a weekend meal might owe pennies in actual federal tax. The cost of calculating it, through crypto tax software or extra time with an accountant, runs $200 to $500 a year.

The tax code already exempts small foreign currency gains and has done so for decades. Buy lunch in Paris with euros and you owe no capital gains on the currency exchange. Buy lunch in Charlotte with a stablecoin, a digital dollar pegged to exactly one US dollar, and you do. Congress told Americans that stablecoins are safe for payments. The IRS is treating every payment like a securities transaction. The new Form 1099-DA reporting system that took effect this year makes the scale of this problem visible. Coinbase alone generated more than 10 million forms, and more than two million of those covered transactions of $10 or less. Every one of those forms represents a real person expected to understand it, reconcile it, and report it correctly, or risk an IRS notice. That is enormous compliance friction with no corresponding revenue benefit. North Carolina cannot build a competitive stablecoin ecosystem while the federal tax code buries the people who use it in paperwork.

State law can only go so far. North Carolina has two members well positioned to fix this at the federal level: Rep. Greg Murphy on the House Ways and Means Committee and Sen.Thom Tillis on the Senate Finance Committee. Bipartisan proposals for a de minimis exemption, which would exempt routine digital asset purchases from capital gains reporting the same way small foreign currency transactions are already exempt, are advancing through Congress. I encourage Rep. Murphy and Sen. Tillis to champion those reforms. The state level work we are doing on stablecoin regulation and the federal tax fixes need to move together. One without the other leaves North Carolinians stuck between a framework that encourages digital payments and a tax code that punishes them for making one.

North Carolina became the nation’s second-largest banking center by embracing the future of finance before other states did, not by watching from the sidelines. Stablecoins are the next chapter. No North Carolinian should need $500 in specialized software to report a plate of BBQ. That is a problem Raleigh and Washington can fix together, and North Carolina’s leaders are in the right seats to make it happen.

“NC is building future of digital finance. Federal Tax code needs to keep up.” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.