# Dilemma: Treat airdrops and forks as income?

**URL:** <https://discuss.koinly.io/t/dilemma-treat-airdrops-and-forks-as-income/766>\
**Category:** Site Feedback\
**Created:** [December 2, 2020, 6:16pm UTC](https://discuss.koinly.io/t/dilemma-treat-airdrops-and-forks-as-income/766 "2020-12-02T18:16:31Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![David](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex052/user_avatar/discuss.koinly.io/david/32/293_2.png) [@David](https://discuss.koinly.io/u/David)\
**Post date:** [December 2, 2020, 6:16pm UTC](https://discuss.koinly.io/t/dilemma-treat-airdrops-and-forks-as-income/766/1 "2020-12-02T18:16:31Z")

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Setting “Treat airdrops and forks as income”: when would it be good to enable this? What is this for?  
In my country Airdrops are tax-free, so if it is enabled the cost is the price at the time of the airdrop which actually seems to be correct. The problem with this is that on the dashboard “Cost basis” and “Unrealized gains” currently include the airdrops, which I think should not be the case.  
If I disable the setting the dashboard doesn’t include the airdrop as I would expect, but then your tax report will include the whole price of the airdrop as a gain which doesn’t make sense either.

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**Author:** ![koinly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/49beb7/32.png) [@koinly](https://discuss.koinly.io/u/koinly)\
**Post date:** [December 4, 2020, 1:19pm UTC](https://discuss.koinly.io/t/dilemma-treat-airdrops-and-forks-as-income/766/2 "2020-12-04T13:19:39Z")

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Many countries such as the US treat Airdrops/forks as Income at fair market value. If you dont need to pay income tax on these then you can simply ignore the income from airdrops/forks on your final tax report.

Yes the total cost basis will include this amount on the dashboard - this is useful since you may want to know if that airdrops value increased since you received it. If we set the value to zero then gains would always be 100%.

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**Author:** ![David](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex052/user_avatar/discuss.koinly.io/david/32/293_2.png) [@David](https://discuss.koinly.io/u/David)\
**Post date:** [December 4, 2020, 1:41pm UTC](https://discuss.koinly.io/t/dilemma-treat-airdrops-and-forks-as-income/766/3 "2020-12-04T13:41:41Z")

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Thanks, of course it’s good to see the value increase on the dashboard, but if I for example made in this year -1000€ and got an airdrop worth 500€ which is currently worth 600€ I would see a loss of 900, but actually I would expect to see 400 because of the free airdrop, which is not the case.

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**Author:** ![koinly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/49beb7/32.png) [@koinly](https://discuss.koinly.io/u/koinly)\
**Post date:** [December 4, 2020, 1:47pm UTC](https://discuss.koinly.io/t/dilemma-treat-airdrops-and-forks-as-income/766/4 "2020-12-04T13:47:45Z")

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We would show the €500 as Income and then +€100 appreciation as profit. If the Income is not taxed then thats well and good.
