Uniswap Labs, Andreessen Horowitz and the DeFi Education Fund have asked Illinois to exempt decentralized exchanges from draft rules implementing the state’s Digital Asset Tax Act. Their comments were filed on October 30, when the public comment window closed. The rules would apply a 0.2% tax to certain digital-asset business activity starting January 1, 2027, and assign brokers tax-collection and recordkeeping duties.
The contested point is who counts as a broker. The coalition says applying that framework to decentralized exchanges could require tax collection and transaction reporting from systems that do not custody customer assets or identify counterparties like a conventional intermediary. They also object to requirements involving self-custody and record retention, arguing those do not fit software networks where users control their own keys and no central operator controls funds.
That is the operational burden at the heart of the filing: duties built for an identifiable business may not map cleanly onto decentralized software. The immediate checkpoint is whether the Department of Revenue revises the draft before formal rulemaking advances. If the draft retains its current scope, the dispute over applying broker-style tax rules to decentralized platforms is likely to continue.