Show HN: CryptoTrader.Tax – Tax calculator for your crypto trading

https://www.cryptotrader.tax

by wiidude32 • 7 years ago

80 54 7 years ago

nodesocket• 7 years ago

Looks great. Any support for Robinhood crypto trades coming?

jallmann• 7 years ago

For Robinhood crypto, there's form8949.com which is generally fantastic. It can import from a number of crypto exchanges in addition to the traditional brokers.

raz32dust• 7 years ago

Doesn't Robinhood already provide crypto transactions in their Form 1099?

Hydraulix989• 7 years ago

Did anyone actually make money with crypto in 2018?

davidmurdoch• 7 years ago

Many people sold BTC at $14k+ and then bought back in at 10k, 5k, etc. If they didn't sell again for all of 2018 they'd only have "realized gains" and no realized loses. So on paper they'd have only have gains, as the IRS doesn't recognize the market value of your current holdings.

gruez2• 7 years ago

Can't they do a wash sale to create losses? That's how tax loss harvesting works.

Thorrez• 7 years ago

Whether they bought back in doesn't make a difference. If you sell BTC, that's a taxable event.

jmharvey2• 7 years ago

From a tax perspective, sure. If you bought any time before the fall of 2017, and sold any time in 2018, it's pretty easy to have realized a gain in 2018.

wickoff• 7 years ago

Of course.

You can short established coins like BTC and ETH.

There are also so called "flip seasons" where you throw money at random small cap altcoins and flip them 30-200% higher over the course of a month. These happen whenever BTC settles down and consolidates before plunging to news lows.

Macross8299• 7 years ago

You can short established coins like BTC and ETH.

You can, but it's hard to find reputable vendors that offer this that aren't bucketshop scams.

eruci• 7 years ago

Does anyone pay taxes on crypto?

gruez2• 7 years ago

legal answer: yes

pragmatic answer: only if you interacted enough with the US financial system that the IRS might catch you.

seibelj2• 7 years ago

Yes, it is quite easy to pay taxes on crypto and quite difficult to explain during audit how cash ended up in your bank account without associated tax payments.

Pay your taxes!

jniedrauer2• 7 years ago

Yes, it is quite easy to pay taxes on crypto

I only ever played with small amounts for fun, and in the long term, I took losses. But it's very difficult for me to compile all my trades for tax reasons. I set up automated trading on half a dozen different exchanges (some of which no longer exist) using half-baked python scripts with no logs. How on earth do I compile a Form 8453 showing all of those thousands of trades? I could spend months tracking down all the public keys I used and use blockchain explorers to compile a list of transactions... but I would not describe this as easy

jmharvey2• 7 years ago

Yes. I pay my taxes, and I suspect many other people do, too. Tax compliance in the US is generally pretty high.

I also don't steal books from the library, even though I'm pretty sure I could get away with it.

hopler• 7 years ago

Tax compliance is high when counterparty (employer or broker) reports income. Tax compliance on cash transactions is lower.

I don't think stealing books from library at any kind of scale approaching the value of tax evasion is so easy to get away with.

mindslight• 7 years ago

Tax compliance can be high because the people with the most to lose just buy themselves loopholes - eg there's no requirement to file an FBAR for fine art! Enforcement resources can then be focused on keeping the middle class in line.

Pay unto Caesar and all that. But avoiding taxes through financial privacy is not equivalent to stealing. And certainly don't imply that an empire's aggressive wars are in any way akin to local community services!

bonestamp25• 7 years ago

Yes. I've used bitcoin.tax the past few years. This one looks nice although it's missing a couple exchanges that I would need to use it next year (maybe they'll have them by then).

wiidude322• 7 years ago

What exchanges would you like to see added? Constantly working on new additions.

caprese• 7 years ago

yes, the IRS concluded that "less than 800 people pay taxes on crypto" using a flawed and simplistic search string. I looked at how I reported various gains filed in 2014 and 2015 and it would not have included me in those 800 people.

the best thing about bubbles getting larger is that more people with more personalities and expertise are aware of what these things are. A judge wouldn't rubber stamp a subpoena on such basic and flawed logic, a treasury secretary wouldn't trust their employee with as shoddy an analysis, influential senators wouldn't believe it as their own altcoin trades wouldn't be counted. speculation drives innovation.

tom_• 7 years ago

Yes.

Since we've just had our Happy New Tax Year, other UK readers might be interested in this Reddit thread, if only because of the tax-related links: https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinUK/comments/ba8d89/tax_threa...

matz1• 7 years ago

I don't do crypto, if I do I wouldn't. Just like I would not for cash transaction. I know legally I should and there is some risk but the risk is low enough.

lostmsu• 7 years ago

Not having a good descriptive About page is bad for your site. I can't imagine a security savvy person to use tax software of unnamed vendor.

sanbor2• 7 years ago

Is there any rule of thumb to calculate taxes over crypto? Like "10% of your profits". I'm sure if you make more than 500k a year you might have to pay more taxes but I'm sure there is an average that covers 90% of traders.

bonestamp25• 7 years ago

10% of your profits

Calculating your profits (and loses) is what these sites generally do -- that is usually the hard part, especially if you have a lot of transactions. Not to mention, the way that you calculate that differs by jurisdiction. Loses are just as important since they can have a significant benefit to the taxes you owe. I use bitcoin.tax and then export the data for my accountant to fit into the rest of my tax return.

bonestamp25• 7 years ago

*losses

fpgaminer• 7 years ago

If you need a rule of thumb, for example you want to have a rough idea what your taxes would be like to see if you're comfortable doing some liquidation or something, then sure. I'd back-of-the-napkin long-term gains at 20%, and short-term at 35% (covers both federal and state; assumes U.S.).*

Again, very rough. You need concrete numbers once you do actual trading, because in the U.S. you are required to make estimated tax payments. The actual numbers can, for example, vary wildly from nearly 0% to upwards of 50%.

* These are based on a typical 15% federal tax on long-term gains and 5% for state taxes; or 35% being a comfortable average for most people's effective tax rate in the U.S. for short term gains. The 50% tax rate is approached when you have largish gains, toward $1 mil or so, and live in expensive states like New York or California.

bpicolo• 7 years ago

In the US, profit on crypto is straight up capital gains. Held for less than a year = short term capital gains, taxed as regular income. Long term depends state-to-state, but overall taxed less than income (federal has 3 brackets - 0, 15, 20% depending on your income. 500k+ puts you in the 20% bracket)

sanbor2• 7 years ago

Thanks you very much! I was looking into this just to have a guess.

thoughtfunction• 7 years ago

If you didn't keep proper records, then use the cost basis of your crypto as 0 and report the sale price as pure profit. You will never under pay your taxes that way, and if your numbers are low enough, it's probably worth it to overpay on taxes than to spend the time recovering detailed records of what happened in between.

If it's too big of a number for you, then better remake / recover those records. Luckily you have a permanent record called the blockchain.

dkem1415• 7 years ago

I used this this year. Saved my ass

jotakami• 7 years ago

Still waiting for a tool that can correctly handle crypto derivatives, margin interest, swap funding, etc...

atomical2• 7 years ago

Does this tool take multiple tax years into account for cost basis?

hanniabu• 7 years ago

This is the real question. Doing taxes my first year was easy. The following year is was much harder.

wiidude322• 7 years ago

The tool does, it will carry over the cost basis from previous years of trading for calculating the next year's short/long term gains.

atomical2• 7 years ago

Is the pricing based on trades per year or trades total among years?

peteretep• 7 years ago

What are other British people doing? I’ve been selling an amount each year that keeps me under capital gains threshold, which seems sensible?

shanebrunette• 7 years ago

If anybody is looking for an anonymous free alternative I created a crypto tax calculator that supports 65+ exchanges

https://cryptotaxcalculator.io

cryptotaxesnow• 7 years ago

https://tokentax.co has real crypto accountants checking your uploads, working with you on missing cost basis, answering any questions you might have on intercom. US, UK, Canada and other countries supported automatically. And a TokenTax Crypto-specialist CPA can file your returns in the US as well

Show HN: CryptoTrader.Tax – Tax calculator for your crypto trading

Related Stories