Coinbase court battle vs IRS pushed off to March

Bitcoin exchange Coinbase will have to wait a little bit more before it can have its day in court against the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.

This was after U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley granted the federal government’s request to move the hearing from Feb. 16 to March 23, according to the Feb. 3 court order sent by Jeffrey Berns’ office to CalvinAyre.com.

Berns was the Coinbase customer who challenged the legitimacy of IRS’ John Doe summons on grounds that they “would constitute an abuse of process.” The lawyer and managing partner of Berns Weiss also described the IRS’s request to obtain the user records as “overboard.”

The hearing was for the “motions to intervene filed by Berns and Coinbase in their efforts to challenge the summons served by the IRS.” If you recall, the California district court allowed the tax agency to require Coinbase to submit records of its customer transactions as part of an investigation into possible tax fraud committed by U.S. residents who engaged in business with or through the bitcoin wallet service.