How Janna Scott’s federal-agency story changed

DeFi Tax’s April 2025 publicity described private meetings with regulators. Nine months later, a company release described research conducted with the IRS and SEC. By March 2026, Fintech Confidential was introducing Scott under an IRS-agent headline. The publications make different claims about her authority, from access to officials to employment inside an agency.[S28][S29][S03][S01]

A buyer could reasonably read those accounts as evidence that federal officials had helped establish the product’s reliability. The distinction becomes important at the point of purchase: who reviewed the work, what did they conclude, and was their assessment about DeFi Tax or something else?

From private meetings to an IRS-agent headline

The April 23, 2025 GlobeNewswire release came from DeFi Tax. It attributes to Scott an account of agencies acknowledging the research’s accuracy in private meetings while taking no public action. The release interprets suspensions of crypto audits in 2023 and 2024 as tacit recognition of that work. Both the account of the meetings and the interpretation of subsequent events come from the company.[S28]

LA Weekly’s January 12, 2026 profile gives a more definite account of causation. It says the IRS suspended crypto audits in March 2023 after reviewing Scott’s research and finding its CSV-based audit methodology unreliable. The writer presents that explanation in the article’s narration, making the publisher’s verification of it part of the story.[S29]

The January 26 launch release describes four years of research in collaboration with the IRS, SEC and universities. It also credits the research with the audit pause and names Workhouse CEO Adam Nelson as media contact. The language gives the agencies a role in the work used to promote the product. What did that collaboration involve?[S03]

On March 24, Fintech Confidential adds an employment claim. The headline calls Scott an IRS agent, the introduction asserts experience inside federal agencies, and the biography describes an enrolled agent. The episode screenshot and newsletter excerpts place those descriptions together on the credential page. The job description is the publisher’s wording; Scott’s role in supplying or approving it is a separate reporting question.[S01][S04]

What did the agencies agree to do?

At approximately 30:12 in the published interview transcript, Scott describes meetings and presenting findings to regulatory personnel. Her account gives a starting point for checking the federal relationship: the offices involved and the response she says followed.[S04]

Officials can hear a complaint without participating in a research project. A collaboration would involve work that could be described, such as reviewing methods or supplying data. If an agency helped develop a commercial product, the company should identify that contribution and the period in which it occurred.

A response about one dataset would have a narrower scope than an assessment of the software. The agency correspondence and research records would let a customer judge that scope directly, without inferring an endorsement from the names of federal offices.

Which audits were paused, and who made the decision?

The audit account rests on an agency decision and an explanation for it. The deciding office and affected cases would establish what was paused. A contemporaneous directive or attributable agency response could explain why.

A pause affecting specified examinations would be very different from suspending every crypto audit. The company and publishers repeating the claim owe readers that distinction. An event occurring after a research presentation establishes a sequence; linking the two requires evidence about the decision.

Even a regulator accepting criticism of a rival product would leave a separate question about DeFi Tax’s own calculations. The company’s software has to perform the work for which a customer pays.

Scott’s statement about Tax Notes

At approximately 50:47–51:04, the interview transcript attributes to Scott a statement that her research had been published in Tax Notes. It also records her saying that a university sent research to government recipients before an NDA restriction on public release was removed.[S04]

The title and publication date would allow a reader to examine the paper. Its authors and methods would show whether it validates a calculation, discusses a tax problem or reports on Scott’s work. Which Tax Notes article does she mean?

For the university work, the department and researchers would establish who performed the review. Their conclusions would show how much weight the company can place on it. Scott’s account describes an NDA restriction being removed, so the question now is what the released research establishes.

The calculations need a reproducible test

An independent product test would begin with a defined set of transactions and an explained expected result. Reviewers could then reproduce each calculation, separating incomplete data from disputed tax treatment. This would give customers a way to assess performance directly.

DeFi Tax should undergo the same test as the platforms it criticizes. Different answers identify a problem to investigate; the benchmark must explain which answer is correct. Dating the software versions would also prevent a result from being applied to an update the test never examined.

The customer agreement adds another part of the purchase decision. DeFi Tax markets audit protection separately from the software subscription. Buyers need both the evidence behind the calculations and the written terms governing help if those calculations are challenged.[S14][S30]