Topic: Anyone using Bitcoin.tax? how do you enter OKcoin gains/losses? (Read 1012 times)

Same tax logic should apply whether bitcoin or an alt.


In the US, the question as I understand it is whether an exchange of bitcoin for an alt (or an alt for an alt) is a taxable event. The answer is "no" if it is considered a "like-kind" exchange. Whether the IRS will consider bitcoin and an altcoin as "like-kind" is one of those unanswered questions as far as I can tell.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Like-kind_exchange

There are scenarios that can get really complicated. Suppose you buy some ether before the split and sell some ETC (or some ETH) after the split. How do you determine the cost basis?? Fuck if I know.

EDIT: Oh I think I misunderstood your question. In the US, if you exchange alt for bitcoin, and then immediately sell the bitcoin for fiat, and you assume alt and bitcoin are like-kind, then the taxable event is when you sell the bitcoin for fiat. If you assume they are not like-kind, then exchanging alt for bitcoin triggers long-term capital gains/losses, and then selling bitcoin for fiat triggers short term capital gains/losses; however, if you do those sales essentially at the same time, then you consider the price of bitcoin to the the same for each event, so your short term gain/loss is zero. So your tax would end up the same, regardless whether you consider alt and bitcoin to be like kind.
EDIT 2: You would pay zero tax since your long term cap gain rate is zero.

Disclaimer: I am neither an attorney nor an accountant. Listen to me at your peril.
 

The website looks good, but I don't think the laws are black and white so it is hard to declare your taxes correctly.
In Germany it seems to be unknown whether it is First in First out, or Last in Last out, something that makes a difference.

Also we need to hold bitcoin for 1 year, then profits are tax free. Does that count too for alts? What about when I hold my alts for 1 year, then sell for Bitcoin so that I can then cash out? Is that then tax free, or do I pay as the Bitcoin wasn't held for a year?

That's why I don't trade, I hold bitcoin for a year or more, it makes it so much easier!

So I got a reply through website support to enter them as a SELL at the market price. But that doesn't make sense to me.

My original question: I lost some bitcoins going long on OKcoin in 2014. My first instinct was to treat them as a regular trade, as if I had sold them for $0 (which is effectively what happened from my perspective), but my accountant told me at the time to treat them as a capital loss at the then-current price. In other words, if I lost one bitcoin in 2014 going long at $600 with closing of the long position occurring at $400, then that counts as a $400 capital loss, with "cost basis" playing no role in the calculation.

If I entered at SELL of 1 bitcoin at $400, that would trigger a capital gain (assuming cost basis going back to 2011), which doesn't make sense to me in the context of a trade that ought to be a capital loss. Maybe I am missing something?

This is an important question to have answered for the sake of increasing the utility of www.bitcoin.tax.

Thanks. I just left a message through the website with this question.

It's active, although don't have integration into OKCoin futures.

Depending on the volume, send a message to support with any data you have and I'll see what we can do. I know some of the accountants we list have dealt with clients with similar data.

It's a website that can be used to help calculate your taxes. They don't actually file anything. You can import trades / income / spending manually, import .csv files, or in a few cases connect directly to exchange accounts using an API to import the data. Most of the exchanges are listed although there isn't one for OKcoin. It's been around for a while but I'm not sure how actively it's maintained.

Haven't heard of this before.
Is it for collecting taxes on bitcoin purchases or for filing.
It is tax season after all.
Will look into this further. Haven't heard of this site/software before.

Has anyone been using Bitcoin.tax lately? It's working more or less for me although there are a few snags and I'm wondering whether there is any competing software that I should be looking into.

Also, there's no interface with OKCoin. Any idea what would be the most appropriate way to enter gains/losses from futures trading?