Thank you to State Representative Martin McLaughlin for his leadership and support!

Illinois Wrote Two Digital Taxes in the Same Bill. Only One of Them Is Measured the Normal Way.
One takes a share of what a company charges. The other takes a share of what your money is worth. That difference is not a detail, and fixing it takes one line.
https://ilbtccouncil.substack.com/p/illinois-wrote-two-digital-taxes

Five Weeks to Do This the Normal Way
Illinois has a second deadline, and almost nobody is watching it. It decides whether the public ever gets to comment on the Digital Asset Tax rules at all.
https://ilbtccouncil.substack.com/p/five-weeks-to-do-this-the-normal

Register by January 1st. The Form Doesn’t Exist.
#Illinois made it a crime to operate without a certificate it hasn’t created yet, under a definition nobody can apply. That’s not a technicality. It’s a fairness problem, with ~120 days remaining.
https://ilbtccouncil.substack.com/p/register-by-january-1-the-form-doesnt

One Purchase, Three Taxes: How Illinois’s Digital Asset Tax Multiplies Itself
You buy $500 of #Bitcoin. The exchange holds it. You move it to your own wallet. Under the new law, that may be three separate taxable events, each measured against the full $500.
https://ilbtccouncil.substack.com/p/one-purchase-three-taxes-how-illinoiss

What a Tax Can’t Do

Illinois past a first-in-the-nation tax on digital assets. One thing its authors didn’t plan on: it put us all in the same room.

https://substack.com/@ilbtccouncil/note/p-209787310

Digital Defenders

The future of self-custody: Will it prove to be antifragile? Can we rely on open-source developers to defend property rights, or are we asking too much?

https://ilbtccouncil.substack.com/p/digital-defenders

Illinois's Digital Asset Tax Is Now in Court. Here’s What the Lawsuit Actually Says.
A man in Austin buys a coffee and pays a friend back for a scone. Illinois may have just taxed both. That example is on page 11 of a complaint filed last week.
https://open.substack.com/pub/ilbtccouncil/p/illinoiss-digital-asset-tax-is-now

A Tax on Your Worst Day
Illinois's new digital asset tax takes its cut even when you sell at a loss — and that's a moral line, not a technicality.
https://open.substack.com/pub/ilbtccouncil/p/a-tax-on-your-worst-day

TLDR: #Illinois 0.2% Tax

-Rate: 0.2%: on broker/business activity for IL customers. NOT on owning crypto. NOT on gains.
-Who collects it: exchanges, custodians, wallet/transfer providers ("brokers"). Out-of-state brokers pulled in at $100K IL receipts.
-Penalty: Class 3 felony for unregistered/noncompliant brokers (+ corpofficers/agents) — 2–5 yrs, up to $25K.
-Revenue: ~$60M/yr from crypto. Budget is $56B. → ~0.1% of the budget.
-First in the nation. No other state taxes digital assets this way.

Shoutout to Midwest Bitcoin Summit CEO, Bitcoin Scholarship Foundation President, IBC member, and all around great human, Andrew Tilmann. Please check out his Vegas ‘26 presentation below…

https://youtu.be/xGupEz5f-bg