Thinking about crypto as I think about my stock portfolio, I can understand fees for the sending in of a cryptocurrency, even when those are in a different currency as in ERC-20 exchanges on the ETH blockchain. That’s a fee-to-send and affects the cost basis of the to-be-exchanged crypto. Fees for receiving exchanged stocks, in contrast to crypto, are built into this process. All the fees connected in the transaction are shown as one fee. The transaction fee is applied before the purchase of the new stock. I get less of the stock being received than I would were there not a fee and also presumably, the people handling the transactions divvy up (if necessary) the recorded fee appropriately. There is no fee-to-receive documented as such in a stock transaction. Just one fee which is fairly easily incorporated into one’s cost basis.
In crypto, though, there are fees recorded on the blockchain for each and every transaction. Who is responsible for paying fees on the sending end is clear; who is responsible for paying fees on the receiving end is not! Even exchanges between my own wallets show these fees, and sometimes the receiving wallet even documents less of a transferred crypto. I have documentation of this.
I happily would make my own rule about including the fee for the send on purchases, sales, and exchanges and not including any fee for the receipt of the new crypto except that I’m pretty certain that Koinly does not work this way in preparing data for taxes because it’s not that simple. I have been given advice from Koinly to just use the APIs, even though it also has been stated that some of them are inaccurate. Cold wallets have csv files, which vary widely in what they include. Again, I have documentation.
I really would prefer to have an accurate tax report in the end. It’s taking a lot of time to reconcile my Koinly portfolio with these blasted wallets without any assurance that in the end, I’m doing the ‘correct’ (IRS-approved) thing. The IRS doesn’t say one thing about two or more fees in transactions.
What do those of you out there think? What does Koinly think?
Fees: this is a fun topic. I found this article helpful (https://tokentax.co/blog/are-ethereum-gas-fees-tax-deductible/).
Fees as a tax deduction depends on how aggressive you want to be with your tax, whether you are an individual or a company etc. Most software seems to only count the initial gas/fee into the Cost Basis/Disposal calculation of a Trade, and all other fees whether for transfers or other reasons as Disposals in there own right - thereby subject to Capital Gains and a tax liability (which I personally think is ridiculous).
I wish they (Koinly) had an option for us to choose whether or not fees (not related to acquisition or disposal) are simply a tax deduction/Capital Loss.
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