Cryptocurrency Traders Learning That Taxes Are a Thing

Posted on by Caleb Newquist
cryptocurrency trading taxes

Here’s an amusing MarketWatch story by Shawn Langlois on how cryptocurrency traders, presumably having no concept of income, are all bent out of shape about the taxes they owe on their trading gains.

The lead kvetcher, latex_man, posted a thread entitled “I just did my taxes and it turns out I lost almost everything” and let’s all have a good laugh together:

I bought 2 BTC in early 2017. I did a few trades between BTC and dollars but in the end effectively I sold it late in the year for about $40k and changed my mind and bought them back a few hours later. I got weak hands, what can I say.

Anyway, I still got that 2 BTC (and no cash). My accountant said because of my trades, I have to pay like 35% income taxes (short term gains) on it with state and federal, so like $15000. If I sell it now for $10k each I’m only gonna end up with $5k left over. He says I owe $15k by April no matter what happens this year to my bitcoins even though it crashed by 50%.

WTF?

Fuck taxes man. This is so fucked it’s like I didn’t earn anything.

Langlois combed through the comments which are filled with comically bad advice for this forlorn trader, and I have got to imagine there’s a lot of this going on right now. I hope you tax accountants with naive crypto traders as clients are letting them down gently.

[MW]

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Is it just me or is pwc trying really hard to bring in seniors in Chicago? The other day at GT, the same pwc recruiter called every S1 in audit asking if we’d be interested in moving over.

A few of us actually answered just to see what he had to say and he was pushing real hard in getting people to accept that if we made a move, we’d have to take a step down (S1 to move over to A3), and that they’d be making a large investment in keeping us long-term (at least through a promotion to manager). This is after we lost a S2 and an A2 who both moved to pwc. Plus, we’ve received several emails from other outside recruiters gauging our interest in the Big 4, not to mention my friends at the Big 4 trying to get me to send them my resume so they can refer me (for a much larger referral bonus, I’m assume). Not sure if this is juicy enough information, but that’s pretty much what’s happening right now over at G to the T.

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If you don’t want to be hassled by Big 4 recruiters, simply say, “I’m not interested, thanks,” and go on your merry way. But judging by all the complaining at GT, lots of employees are probably happy to entertain some options.