Tax day this year, like everything else, is different. The United States Internal Revenue Service has rescheduled it to July 15, but there’s little time left to get your records together and to file. Everyone knows the IRS is pushing hard to scrutinize crypto. A new IRS question appears at the top of Schedule 1 of your 2019 Form 1040 asking if you received, sold, sent, exchanged or otherwise acquired any financial interest in any virtual currency at any time during the year. As the IRS classifies crypto as property, any sale should produce a gain or a loss. Perhaps …

The crypto community is incredibly financially literate and savvy. Despite everyone calling for crypto adoption and more merchants to accept crypto as payment, most people want to accumulate more crypto, not spend it. Holders think it will be worth more in the future, so why spend it now? Spending Bitcoin (BTC) at Starbucks for a cup of coffee is a huge pain in the side. Although the transaction itself might be relatively painless with the help of a mobile app, the accounting and tax implications can be frightening if you’re transacting on a regular basis. This is because the United …

Many crypto holders are reporting their crypto transactions for the first time as a result of the United States Internal Revenue Service’s question about “virtual currency” on the 2019 tax return form. It is a big question for some taxpayers — many have not reported their crypto gains in the past or may have done so without a great deal of precision. Should a taxpayer let bygones be bygones or file an amended return to accurately reflect their historical income from crypto? The IRS subpoenas of crypto exchanges for taxpayers’ trading histories certainly raise the stakes. To layer more on, …

The United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is reportedly soliciting third-party contractors to assist with calculations of cryptocurrency users’ transactions. Crypto tax software firm CryptoTrader.Tax publicly shared details of a letter it claims to have received from the IRS on May 12, together with an accompanying Statement of Work. The latter has been uploaded to CryptoTrader’s blog, along with excerpts from the letter, which reportedly stated: “The Internal Revenue Service is engaging outside contractors to assist our Revenue Agents in calculating taxpayers’ gains or losses as a result of their transactions involving virtual currency. We are placing a few single-case …

Bitcoin (BTC) is the largest decentralized digital currency in the world, with an estimated market capitalization of around $169 billion. In the nearly 12 years since the publication of Satoshi Nakamoto’s famous white paper in 2008, Bitcoin has become the most well-known example of a cryptocurrency, and it is responsible for sparking the blockchain revolution. More than half a million peer-to-peer transactions have been recorded on the Bitcoin blockchain, a public and verifiable distributed ledger. The network’s proof-of-work consensus algorithm confirms transactions and produces new blocks without needing a third party. Bitcoin is a revolutionary technology, but the network's massive …

It’s been a good week for Bitcoin. After languishing at around $6,700, the cryptocoin is up more than 6 percent over the last week to take it above $7,000. And the next halving is now less than three weeks away. Changpeng Zhao is looking further ahead. He predicts that in a few months, as governments implement quantitative easing measures to stabilize coronavirus-hit economies, Bitcoin will rise. “Mathematics works, he told BlockDown 2020, a two-day virtual conference. “If you increase supply of the fiat currency and Bitcoin is a limited asset, mathematics will eventually work.” For crypto-ATM services like DigitalMint and …

Payments of $1,200 from the CARES Act to Americans in need have begun to go out to those who authorized the Internal Revenue Service to make direct deposits into their bank accounts. However, the money may never reach its targets. Intended to help families through the coronavirus crisis, the payments were not exempted from private debt collection, which means banks and other creditors could lawfully intercept the emergency payments. If ever there was evidence that cryptocurrencies were a safer way for people to receive funds, CARES Act payment interceptions and garnishments are surely proof. The indifference of bank and creditor …

Many investments these days seem volatile, but there are few asset classes that have been as volatile as crypto. If you have losses, you might have trouble claiming them, offsetting gains or reducing your income. In fact, asking if you have tax losses or even expecting some sounds like a silly question. How losses are treated under the tax law is an important and complex question. In general, our tax system requires you to treat each tax year separately. You tally up your income, deductions and other items, and you figure your tax bill for the tax year based on …

Could this be the year the world gets serious about cryptocurrency taxation? The coronavirus pandemic, after all, could cost the global economy as much as $4.1 trillion — or almost 5% of global gross domestic product — according to the Asian Development Bank. Governments will soon be looking to tap all possible income sources to balance their budgets, including crypto, say tax experts. “At some point, somebody is going to have to pick up the bill” for the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated economic stimulus packages, Peter Brewin, a PwC tax partner in Hong Kong, told Cointelegraph, adding: “We can …

The United States Internal Revenue Service delayed tax day this year from April 15 to July 15, and perhaps that means many Americans aren’t thinking about taxes during this very strange time. Indeed, they seem understandably focused on the variety of new government programs that comprise part of the CARES Act, enacted to try to boost the slumped economy and put some needed dollars in people’s hands. Related: IRS Delays Tax Day to July 15, Still Monitors Crypto The CARES Act includes provisions for checks for consumers and benefits for businesses, with several types of loans, tax credits and other …

Crypto communities and the United States Internal Revenue Service haven’t exactly had a love fest over the last five years. It started in 2014, when the IRS said crypto was property, and it hasn’t got much better since. In addition to sending those 10,000 “beware” letters and trying to get crypto exchanges to turn over customer lists, the IRS has even gone so far as to alter the most hallowed tax form, Form 1040, to ask a crypto-specific question. However, the IRS is actually making a big effort to cut all taxpayers — and that includes the crypto community too …

Last year, Bitwise Asset Management reported to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission that 95% of trading volume in Bitcoin (BTC) was fake. Bitwise found that, according to data published by CoinMarketCap — a widely cited tracker of crypto statistics — Bitcoin’s approximate average daily volume in April 2019 was $10 billion. In comparison, just $5.5 billion worth of Apple stock — the most liquid stock in the world — trades daily, and the market cap of Apple stock is nine times the size of Bitcoin’s. Related: Data Transparency and Fake Trading Volumes — Institutionalizing Crypto The Blockchain Transparency …