I was under the impression that spending your crypto required you to file and pay capital gains tax. If this is true, won't you have to have a line item for every single purchase you made with this card for the whole year on your schedule D?
Co-Founder of CoinTracker (https://www.cointracker.io) (YC W18) here. You're exactly right. We built software to specifically automate this crypto tracking and tax compliance process. We've partnered with Coinbase and TurboTax to specifically solve this pain point.
Makes me sad that they are further entrenching their tentacles in our tax system which further discourages the government from simplifying this process.
Are they looking at solving the fact that spending appreciated "assets" will lead to a tax bill at the end of the year? Do they plan to sell extra to cover the gains, and then withhold them? If they don't and crypto collapses again, people might actually be out money at the end of the year for using their card right?
I asked if I could pay with BTC and my bank passed it up until they got word back from Fanny Mae that it was okay so long as you can demonstrate X years of ownership. I think they made a public announcement about it. It was shortly after BTC hit its peak a couple years ago. Coinbase let me export something that satisfied the bank and government that I wasn't money laundering (I'd bought the BTC many years before for less than $10k with money for a bank account I still owned, so I could show the transactions there too).
For my taxes, Coinbase has a tool for exporting that calculates that sort of thing. You just select the time range and it gives you all the transactions and how much they appreciated from when you last bought that much.
Reporting a few thousand small capital gains transactions on a US Tax Return is feasible. If you exceed the import transaction limits in, say, TurboTax, you can enter and e-file the summary of your transactions, and print out and snail mail the 50 pages of the statement itself.
(I've done this before with Betterment, when a bunch of $10 deposits each turned into like 7-8 small lots that were a few dollars each.)
I did this with the Shift Card way back, which was the original card for Coinbase spending. It was a massive pain in the ass to explain the transaction history. I wouldn't be surprised if Coinbase has improved upon that experience, but to what degree I'd be curious about.
I don't particularly understand why everyone's happy to gloss over tax implications being undiscussed on things like this. Whether or not it's right (I don't believe it is), the fact remains that the average new user is not aware of this quirk of Crypto.
The taxable event occurs because the IRS sees crypto as property rather than a currency. Let's say you buy $100 worth of Bitcoin in the past. Now the value of your coins is $120.
If you decide to send $5 worth of bitcoin as payment for something, they consider that a taxable event. You sold X amount of bitcoin, which appreciated 20% value from when you bought it. That X amount was worth $4, now it is worth $5, so you would owe a tiny amount in capital gains tax on $1 you gained.
Edit: This exact same scenario happens for Foreign Exchange, but the government excludes most transactions under a certain amount because it's too complicated for travelers. Also, the rate of USD to EURO doesn't fluctuate as wildly as crypto can, so the gains are minimal anyways.
You have to pay capital gains on bitcoin if you spend it, even if you don't convert it to fiat first.
e.g. buy $10 of coins, use same coins to buy a meal later, if the value of the meal is $20 (whether denominated in fiat or the equivalent bitcoin), you have a $10 capital gain.
Maybe Coinbase sets things up in such a way that the cap gains event is triggered only when the balance is paid off?
E.g. imagine I incur $10 USD on the card. From Coinbase's perspective, I just owe them $10 USD + maybe interest at the end of some fixed time period. I could pay them in USD or I could pay them in crypto. Since it's not mandated I pay in crypto, you can't really say I've "spent" my crypto until I use it to pay off my balance. In which case you only end up with 12 taxable events per year.
I'm sure there's some arbitrage opportunity I'm not accounting for, but it seems like this might work?
I wonder how smart this system is going to be — it’d be wise to have the rewards & purchasing happen on a stablecoin to avoid this. Then make users have to choose to then stash it somewhere they won’t draw from and trigger these events, if they want to “invest in a crypto”. It’d also be wise because coinbase can then charge their fees as they so do.
This is also fundamentally not so different from e.g. having spend vehicles with your brokerage. But the addressable market may be higher / different for coinbase which could cause a lot of headaches, like this one, if not carefully managed.
The transaction in the back end probably is just an internal transfer. You do a one off transaction say 1000 and you spend from that. So you only did a single asset sale
It's one of those things that gets complicated pretty quickly. Essentially, for every transaction you make you have to determine if you made a profit or a loss with your crypto. The purchase date of the crypto you're converting into USD matters because you need that for short-term vs long-term capital gains. This problem also gets worse if you buy crypto at regular intervals, like I often do, because now you have different gain/loss potentials in the same transaction.
Sure, a program can calculate this for you, but it does make filing more complicated. You'll probably have a very long list of items on your 1099.
chanfest22|5 years ago
https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/taxes-reports-and-fina...
notyourwork|5 years ago
Makes me sad that they are further entrenching their tentacles in our tax system which further discourages the government from simplifying this process.
arcticbull|5 years ago
jkhdigital|5 years ago
raullen|5 years ago
undefinednull|5 years ago
MithrilTuxedo|5 years ago
I asked if I could pay with BTC and my bank passed it up until they got word back from Fanny Mae that it was okay so long as you can demonstrate X years of ownership. I think they made a public announcement about it. It was shortly after BTC hit its peak a couple years ago. Coinbase let me export something that satisfied the bank and government that I wasn't money laundering (I'd bought the BTC many years before for less than $10k with money for a bank account I still owned, so I could show the transactions there too).
For my taxes, Coinbase has a tool for exporting that calculates that sort of thing. You just select the time range and it gives you all the transactions and how much they appreciated from when you last bought that much.
tylerhou|5 years ago
xur17|5 years ago
cbhl|5 years ago
(I've done this before with Betterment, when a bunch of $10 deposits each turned into like 7-8 small lots that were a few dollars each.)
Klonoar|5 years ago
I don't particularly understand why everyone's happy to gloss over tax implications being undiscussed on things like this. Whether or not it's right (I don't believe it is), the fact remains that the average new user is not aware of this quirk of Crypto.
wmf|5 years ago
ericmay|5 years ago
I was under the impression that for capital gains taxes it's more so buying, holding, then selling for a profit.
Could be mistaken here though.
BitwiseFool|5 years ago
If you decide to send $5 worth of bitcoin as payment for something, they consider that a taxable event. You sold X amount of bitcoin, which appreciated 20% value from when you bought it. That X amount was worth $4, now it is worth $5, so you would owe a tiny amount in capital gains tax on $1 you gained.
Edit: This exact same scenario happens for Foreign Exchange, but the government excludes most transactions under a certain amount because it's too complicated for travelers. Also, the rate of USD to EURO doesn't fluctuate as wildly as crypto can, so the gains are minimal anyways.
javert|5 years ago
e.g. buy $10 of coins, use same coins to buy a meal later, if the value of the meal is $20 (whether denominated in fiat or the equivalent bitcoin), you have a $10 capital gain.
andrewfong|5 years ago
E.g. imagine I incur $10 USD on the card. From Coinbase's perspective, I just owe them $10 USD + maybe interest at the end of some fixed time period. I could pay them in USD or I could pay them in crypto. Since it's not mandated I pay in crypto, you can't really say I've "spent" my crypto until I use it to pay off my balance. In which case you only end up with 12 taxable events per year.
I'm sure there's some arbitrage opportunity I'm not accounting for, but it seems like this might work?
dumbfounder|5 years ago
jkhdigital|5 years ago
which might be the next product from Coinbase
awinder|5 years ago
This is also fundamentally not so different from e.g. having spend vehicles with your brokerage. But the addressable market may be higher / different for coinbase which could cause a lot of headaches, like this one, if not carefully managed.
vmception|5 years ago
Borrow a stablecoin like DAI and deposit that on Coinbase and you can spend it on the debit card and earn rewards.
Don't forget to buy insurance on your DeFi use to mitigate a wider variety of risks.
m3kw9|5 years ago
smoovb|5 years ago
xur17|5 years ago
bobyfyfy|5 years ago
BitwiseFool|5 years ago
Sure, a program can calculate this for you, but it does make filing more complicated. You'll probably have a very long list of items on your 1099.
eachro|5 years ago
apta|5 years ago
kylebenzle|5 years ago
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