How To Avoid Taxes On Cryptocurrency
The IRS looks at cryptocurrency like any other property, like comic books or a car. The government has imposed taxes on cryptocurrency either as regular income or as capital gains. Crypto investors are searching for How To Avoid Taxes On Cryptocurrency. Taxes are usually charged on the difference if you sell it for more than you were paid.
But, similar to any other capital, there are a few ways to lower your tax bill. What you require to know is listed below. The best way to handle alternative assets like cryptocurrencies is with the help and advice of a financial advisor.
How Crypto Taxes Work
The IRS doesn’t count crypto as money for any tax purpose. Instead, it thinks of cryptocurrency as property and has decided that the same tax rules that apply to transactions involving property also apply to transactions involving cryptocurrency.
This means the tax code doesn’t have special sections or breaks for crypto. If you use cryptocurrency to make money or accept it as payment, you have to pay taxes on that money. You can be taxed on your cryptocurrency holdings in two ways.
Capital Gains
If you sell your cryptocurrency and make money, this is a capital gain, just like if you sold any other piece of property and made money. According to the IRS, the type of gain or loss depends on whether or not the digital currency is a capital asset in the taxpayer’s hands.
When a taxpayer sells or trades virtual currency that is a capital asset in their possession, the taxpayer usually has a capital gain or loss. Capital assets include things like stocks, bonds, and other investment property.
You have to pay money gains tax when you market something for more than its tax basis. The asset’s value when you get it is on a tax basis. When you sell cryptocurrency, whether you bought it as an investment or got it in exchange for something else, you may have to pay taxes on your capital gains.
Earnings, Property Gain
When you make more money through work or selling things that aren’t investments, the IRS counts that as a taxable gain. This is what is called normal income. This is also true for digital currencies. You realize a normal loss or gain when you get cryptocurrency as payment for work or in exchange for goods and services.
When you get cryptocurrency in the form of goods or services, you need to figure out how much it is valuable on the market at that time. This is your gain that you have to pay taxes on. This is true if you utilize cryptocurrency. If you trade your cryptocurrency for another value item, you create a taxable wealth taxed as regular income.
In this case, you would have to pay the IRS the difference between how much the cryptocurrency was worth and how much you got for it. Again, this is just like any other property deal. There are two tax rates for regular income and income from capital gains. Most of the time, taxes on capital gains are a lot lower than taxes on a regular income.
You do not have to report a taxable gain if you buy cryptocurrency. All property is like this. A net-neutral exchange is the purchase of an asset. A taxable event only happens if you purchase cryptocurrency for greater than you paid for it or if you get cryptocurrency in the form of work, goods, or services.
Even though the details can differ, you can’t usually avoid paying capital gains taxes if you own cryptocurrency and then sell it for a profit. If you bought your cryptocurrency, your gains are the difference between how much you paid and how much you got back.
If you got your crypto in exchange for items or services, your gains are the difference between how much the cryptocurrency is worth on the market and how much you made when you sold it. If you get cryptocurrency as payment for goods or services, you will have to pay income taxes like everyone else. In this case, your tax situation is the same as if you had traded any other two types of property.
How to Avoid Taxes on Cryptocurrency
When investing in cryptocurrency, you should be careful for two reasons. First, cheating, money laundering, and other criminal activities are not uncommon in the crypto world. Second, as of the beginning of 2022, the IRS and the SEC were still figuring out how to handle all types of this asset class.
This means that the IRS pays a lot of attention to investments in cryptocurrencies. There is an excellent opportunity that you wish to be checked.
Keeping these two warnings in mind, here seem to be three ways to reduce crypto taxes:
- Control your cash flow
If you trade goods and services for cryptocurrency, you can lower your tax bill by trying to manage when you get these assets. If you buy cryptocurrency whenever its value is low, you can ensure you get the least amount of taxable wealth. When you purchase your cryptocurrency, you’ll have to pay more taxes because of this.
However, taxes on capital gains are lower than income taxes. But this strategy depends on predicting how a volatile asset will move. You can also use a method called HIFO, which stands for highest in, first out. In this case, if you buy or sell things with your cryptocurrency, you would keep track of which tokens you use for each transaction.
You try to use tokens whose original cost (what they were worth when you bought or got them) is as close as possible to what you’re buying. This cuts down on any value gains, which lowers your tax bill. So, let’s say you paid $5,000 for Token ABC. In the end, you pay $10,000 for Token 123.
Their value goes up until each of them is worth $20,000. You want to buy a new car with one of these tokens. In either case, you will have to pay the difference between what they paid and what this $20,000 car is worth. If you use Token ABC, taxes on $15,000 will be due. However, using Token 123 will only have to pay the $10,000 difference taxes.
- Investments in Retirement Accounts
You can put cryptocurrency in various types of retirement accounts as an investment. You can buy crypto tokens directly and put them in a portfolio that qualifies, or you can invest in crypto-related assets like an asset-indexed ETF or a company that deals with cryptocurrencies.
By investing pre-tax money in a portfolio like a 401(k) or an IRA, you can pay less in taxes. But if you put cryptocurrency in a Traditional Ira, you don’t have to pay taxes on your portfolio gains. Even though you’ll be investing money that has already been taxed, you won’t have to pay taxes when you sell your bitcoin when you retire.
But it’s important to remember that cryptocurrency is a very risky type of asset. This means that it could be good for some parts of your portfolio because it can make real gains, but it could be terrible for others because it has very high risk and no real value.
You should be especially careful with risky assets in a retirement account since you can’t get that cash back once you stop working. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t put anything risky in your IRA. be careful about how you weigh risks and rewards.
- The Wash Sales Rule
Even though the IRS thinks of digital currency as property rather than security, there was no virtual currency wash sale rule as of December 2021. This means you might sell cryptocurrency you own at a loss and buy it back immediately without waiting.
And depending on what happened, you could assert capital losses or gains on your taxes. But there is a catch of sorts. This rule is for cryptocurrencies that are not investment vehicles. It does not, nonetheless, coat any of the many cryptocurrency stocks or funds.
So, let’s say you acquired 100 shares of the stock COIN, which trades on the NASDAQ. You choose to sell the stock, but you lose money on it. To compensate for the loss, you couldn’t buy a “substantially identical” crypto stock in the 30 days before or after the sale. The IRS doesn’t give a clear explanation.
Instead, when this was written, it was mostly up to investors to figure out what substantially identical meant. This can make tax-loss harvesting harder because there are several dark areas to figure out. It would be best to talk to a financial advisor.
Conclusion
The IRS, like any other property, taxes cryptocurrency. This means that you have to pay capital gains taxes on any property you own that you sell for cash, and you have to pay regular income taxes on any exchanges or payments.
You can lower your taxes if you know when and how you trade cryptocurrency. You can do this by putting cryptocurrency in the high-risk part of your retirement portfolio.
