

However, nondisclosure will almost certainly come back and haunt you. Human nature may support the thinking that what the IRS doesn’t know won’t hurt them. Bitcoin and other virtual-currency transactions escape this because, as mentioned above, no third-party intermediaries are involved. The IRS thus knows to expect to see a sale of stock on your 1040 Schedule D. Normally, financial intermediaries report transactions that you are involved in to the IRS.

So how does participating in these transactions impact your tax-compliance responsibilities? First, realize that nondisclosure is a bad idea, even though third-party intermediaries are not involved-meaning no one has reported your transaction to the IRS. Because all transactions are public, anonymous, and immutable, each transaction is continuously validated by every user simultaneously, rendering middlemen effectively useless. The benefit of this new virtual ecosystem is that a Bitcoin user doesn’t need to trust anyone outside of the financial network to validate transactions. Before the existence of cryptocurrency, digital transactions required a trusted third party to act as a middleman. If you engaged in a transaction involving any virtual currency in 2020, the first thing to remember is to truthfully answer the question on the first page of your IRS Form 1040 that asks, “At any time during 2020, did you receive, sell, send, exchange, or otherwise acquire any financial interest in any virtual currency?” This is the IRS’s way of addressing the anonymity of blockchain transactions-by requiring taxpayers to confirm or deny having participated in them.īlockchain technology is a peer-to-peer virtual ledger that makes digital asset records fixed, and most significantly, does not involve a third-party intermediary. Speak to your own tax expert, CPA, or attorney on how you should treat taxation of digital currencies. The area of cryptocurrency taxation is constantly evolving and is not black and white.

Though I’m emphasizing Bitcoin here, these reporting requirements apply to any virtual currency.ĭisclaimer: This post is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as tax, legal, or investment advice.
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This article will tell you how to properly disclose the necessary data to the tax authorities as we head into the 2020 filing season. Do you really want to hand over your liberty and treasured gains to the government’s coffers for this slight infringement? Of course not.
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But many are unaware of the IRS’s virtual currency compliance requirements, for which preposterous penalties can apply-like jail time plus a $250,000 fine. Investors are very fortunate to have participated in this upside, sure.
