The US Tax Service announced intergovernmental initiative aimed at combating tax crimes and money laundering using cryptocurrency.

The working group called J5 brought together representatives of tax authorities from Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States. The participating bodies are the Australian Criminal Investigation Commission (ACIC) and the Australian Tax Office (ATO), the Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA), the Dutch Tax Investigation Service (FIOD), Her Majesty's Office of Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and and Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI).

The initiative is launched in response to the call of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to intensify efforts to combat tax crimes.

“We cannot continue to operate in the same ways we have in the past, siloing our information from the rest of the world while organized criminals and tax cheats manipulate the system and exploit vulnerabilities for their personal gain. The J5 aims to break down those walls, build upon individual best practices, and become an operational group that is forward-thinking and can pressurize the global criminal community in ways we could not achieve on our own,” Don Fort, Chief of IRS-CI, said in a statement.

The tax authorities of the five states will share gathered information, including intelligence, conduct joint operations and help each other raise the awareness of the tax authorities in respecting the laws regarding virtual currencies.

“We will work together to investigate those who enable transnational tax crime and money laundering and those who benefit from it. We will also collaborate internationally to reduce the growing threat to tax administrations posed by cryptocurrencies and cybercrime and to make the most of data and technology,” the IRS website reads.