This post is not intended to give legal, accounting or financial advice - it is to document my own efforts vis-a-vis taxation to promote a discussion of the issues to benefit my understanding of these issues.
Yeah so I have some mining income from my ASIC bitcoin farm, a portion of which is pictured here:
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ImageShack.usAnd I saw a lot of misinformation posted here. I also got some misinformation from my own accountant on a couple separate occasions, but hey I'm still going to use him because these are complicated issues, and he isn't charging me for research time anyway.
So for mining my big costs are:
Electricity
Rent
Property Improvements
Mining equipment - purchase and repair/maintenance costs
Other industrial equipment
Wages
Time
FIRST THE #1 Thing about bitcoin mining for tax purposes AFAIK - When I sell the coins, and I get the dollars into my bank account, that is the amount of business income I have. I count expenses against that income, income - expenses = taxable income. I can also purchase bitcoins, then later sell those bitcoins at a profit or loss. If I held the bitcoins longer than 1 year then it is treated as a capital gain. I can sell the coins, pay the tax as income, then rebuy the coins later and keep track of my basis at the rebuy price, but I can't try to play monkey business and count "mining expenses" as my basis to try to get the capital gains rate. And that's just fine, because I am going to be way better off treating it as income, and here is why:
Equipment - SECTION 179 and separate shipping and handling costs
Allows up to $500,000 of equipment and computer purchases to be "expensed" immediately. See normally I would have to wait over 5 years to depreciate my asic mining farm, which cost me about.... oh let's say $200k to $500k - I haven't actually run the numbers yet. But NOT THIS YEAR because of some taxpayer relief act or stimulus act or some such small business promoting thing. #ThanksObama
This includes the racks, fans, all equipment I need to run the mining farm. Oh yeah and I get to claim the shipping cost of the equipment separately as a postage & handling / equipment transport, delivery expense.
Electricity - All expensed 1) rented locations used only for bitcoin mining - 100% of electricity cost expensed. 2) portion of own home used for bitcoin mining - % of electricity attributable to bitcoin mining expensed
Property improvements 1) money paid to electrician for parts and labor to upgrade power delivery system on rented property = leasehold improvement, 100% expensed, 2) at home, add cost to basis of home OR if I wanted to get really paperwork intensive rent the space in the home used by the bitcoin mining business from myself and try to claim leasehold improvement - I am not that tricky, not going to mess with it
Wages - I use a pass-through entity so I don't need to account for wages paid to myself, but if using a non-pass-through entity have fun wrestling with the extra paperwork, no thanks.
Time - CRITICAL - I spend 500 hours + this year working on my mining farm. It is NOT easy to set up, monitor, and run one of these farms, it is constant work, trust me. I spend 500+ hours annually also because that qualifies my bitcoin mining income as ACTIVE INCOME, against which I can claim expenses.
So yeah that's the short story, I can sell off about $200-$500k of bitcoins to cover expenses before the income taxes on profit start applying. Much better than trying to claim capital gains. I will wait until bitcoins hit $10,000 - $40,0000 before it's worth it to sell the ones with a basis of $5 each