- Trading cryptocurrencies produces capital gains or losses, with the latter being able to offset gains and reduce tax.
- Exchanging one token for another — for example, using Ethereum to purchase an altcoin — creates a taxable event. The token is treated as being sold, thus generating capital gains or losses.
- Receiving payments in crypto in exchange for products or services or as salary is treated as ordinary income at the fair market value of the coin at the time of receipt.
- Spending crypto is a tax event and may generate capital gains or losses, which can be short-term or long-term. For example, say you bought one coin for $100. If that coin was then worth $200 and you bought a $200 gift card, there is a $100 taxable gain. Depending on the holding period, it could be a short- or long-term capital gain subject to different rates.
- Converting a cryptocurrency to U.S. dollars or another currency at a gain is a taxable event, as it is treated as being sold, thus generating capital gains.
- Air drops are considered ordinary income on the day of the air drop. That value will become the basis of the coin. When it's sold, exchanged, etc., there will be a capital gain.
- Mining coins is considered ordinary income equal to the fair market value of the coin the day it was successfully mined.
- Initial coin offerings do not fall under the IRS's tax-free treatment for raising capital. Thus, they produce ordinary income to individuals and businesses alike.
I have wondered about the mining rule, that coins are treated as income at the time they are mined. If I have a chicken and it lays an egg, is that a taxable event? If I have a 3D printer machine and it produces a widget, is that taxable also? From my understanding those are not taxable events even though the egg and widget have known market values at the time produced; only when you sell the egg or widget do have ordinary income tax. Even though cryptocurrency is property like the egg or widget, it is not treated the same way when mined. If I understand correctly, mined crypto is double taxed: once when mined and again when you sell/exchange it.
Maybe I just wasn't trading enough with stocks to notice. I remembered always closing short potions to initiate long positions and not paying taxes until closing the long. Clearly, I've been confused this whole time.
> Exchanging one token for another — for example, using Ethereum to purchase an altcoin — creates a taxable event. The token is treated as being sold, thus generating capital gains or losses.
Which is absurdly difficult for the average person to account for. If I buy 60000 XRP for 4 BTC, what is my cost basis? Do I have to keep track of how much those bitcoins were worth on a different exchange with Fiat pairings at the moment I traded on a pure crypto exchange? What if I don't have that data? How is that calculation supposed to account for actual liquidation costs if I liquidate to pay my taxes?
> You can get the transaction date via the block chain or your exchanges reporting and then lookup the USD value at the time.
What if the exchange I traded on doesn't have a USD Fiat pairing? Can I use any price from any exchange that day? Can I report $0.06/BTC for an xrp sale on 4/16, the date of the major coinbase flash crash? Does it have to be the exact price at the exact time? Can I choose the USD value of the KRW/BTC market on Bithumb?
It kind of sounds like you're trying to think of tax law as some sort of CTF programming game where you're supposed to find the exploit. That's definitely not what tax law is.
You should report your taxes as honestly as possible, using reasonable prices for things.
So any price from any exchange at any time during the day? You haven't clarified a thing by telling me to use the fair market value, because there is no standardized way to determine fair market value. These aren't stable mature markets, a blink of the eye and the market may be transacting at +/-10%. Determining fair market value is the primary problem with cryptocurrency taxation. If you're lucky enough to be trading in USD paired currencies, great...you can use actual transaction values. But the vast majority of crypto trades aren't with any fiat pair.
I did record the details of my trade. What I didn't record was the concurrent status and details of some completely unrelated market on a completely unrelated exchange that establishes some sort of mythical fair market value denominated in USD that so far has no canonical way of being calculated anyway. Nobody can answer the question in any precise way, the IRS guidance on the issue is barebones and not informative at all, and my CPA can't figure it out either. The best we can do is take a best guess that makes it look like I'm not stiffing the IRS.
I want to pay my taxes. I believe crypto should be taxed. But when you get into the situation where well meaning people have to take guesses at what is appropriate, and differences between seemingly simple rules of thumb can result in 20+% disparities in taxes owed, you're gonna have a bad time no matter how diligent you are.
For tax purposes, the complexity is roughly the same as if you traded stock shares of (say) a closely-held private Belgian company for stock shares of (say) a closely-held private Luxembourgish company.
Neither is easy to value, but the rules for doing so are well-defined.
The only thing that's new about this is that the average person can more easily get themselves into a difficult tax situation than before these tokens existed. That's in turn because of the SEC accredited investor rules and other countries' equivalents, which make these tough securities rarely accessible to ordinary folks without financial & tax sophistication. The accredited investor definitions have a lot of flaws, but not the idea behind having such a barrier.
And, indeed, the SEC and foreign equivalents are starting to pay more and more attention to cryptocurrency... The rules are still the rules, as much as people don't like it.
You have to keep track of the fair market value, in USD, at the time of exchange. When you liquidate to pay your taxes that would be another taxable event so you may need to liquidate more to make up for that.
This was the complication that the coinheads chose to ignore. Cryptocoins, like their bullion cousins are awful mediums of exchange for precisely this reason.
What kind of crappy trading are you doing if you aren’t constantly aware of the fiat value of your holdings? Who are these people doing non usd trades who don’t know the fiat value of the trade?
- Trading cryptocurrencies produces capital gains or losses, with the latter being able to offset gains and reduce tax.
- Exchanging one token for another — for example, using Ethereum to purchase an altcoin — creates a taxable event. The token is treated as being sold, thus generating capital gains or losses.
- Receiving payments in crypto in exchange for products or services or as salary is treated as ordinary income at the fair market value of the coin at the time of receipt.
- Spending crypto is a tax event and may generate capital gains or losses, which can be short-term or long-term. For example, say you bought one coin for $100. If that coin was then worth $200 and you bought a $200 gift card, there is a $100 taxable gain. Depending on the holding period, it could be a short- or long-term capital gain subject to different rates.
- Converting a cryptocurrency to U.S. dollars or another currency at a gain is a taxable event, as it is treated as being sold, thus generating capital gains.
- Air drops are considered ordinary income on the day of the air drop. That value will become the basis of the coin. When it's sold, exchanged, etc., there will be a capital gain.
- Mining coins is considered ordinary income equal to the fair market value of the coin the day it was successfully mined.
- Initial coin offerings do not fall under the IRS's tax-free treatment for raising capital. Thus, they produce ordinary income to individuals and businesses alike.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/30/cryptocurrency-and-taxes-wha...