Understanding Taxation of Cryptocurrency with Justin Woodward and Michelle O’Connor from TaxBit

Today we have special guests Justin Woodward and Michelle O’Connor from TaxBit, a company looking to make taxes as easy as possible in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Justin says he was first introduced to crypto when, as a tax attorney, he had a Fortune 500 client asked how they could accept crypto on their platform. Michelle joined BitReserve in 2015 and watched it slowly become more mainstream, especially in the last six to eighteen months. Justin says you shouldn’t have to be a tax attorney to understand or trade cryptocurrency. One thing to consider is that the IRS doesn’t see crypto as currency but rather as property. Just the same, all that property needs to be tracked from a tax perspective. Cryptocurrency is still relatively new and the regulations are changing all the time. TaxBit aims to automate all the regulatory hurdles. Michelle believes that the world will be a better place once we have widespread adoption because of the power it gives consumers. With more and more industrial corporations accepting and facilitating crypto it’s wise to know the tax implications. If a brokerage just sends you a 10-99 at the end of the year and that’s the first you know what you owe, that doesn’t work. People may not know the impact of trading in this space when it comes to taxes. TaxBit would let them see it’s effects on taxes in real time. That in turn would give them more opportunity to maximize trade. Justin says trading can have a positive or negative impact on taxes, so it’s important to know. When staking assets and appreciating wealth, that’s taxable. When you receive an asset that’s income and when you sell if you have a gain you're taxed on income and gain. In the ideal situation you would gain losses and defer gains to get a tax refund at the end of the year. The worst trap you can fall into is figuring out taxes at the end of the year. TaxBit allows you to think about it year round as you make your trades. To learn more about TaxBit you can visit taxbit.com or find them on Twitter @taxbit. Michelle says they’re also active on LinkedIn and Reddit. They love to engage with the community and encourage anyone with any questions about their circumstances to reach out. Justin also suggests everyone try the free trial of TaxBit. -- Divi is creating the world's first closed-loop, vertically-integrated cryptocurrency ecosystem. Much like Apple's ecosystem is anchored by iCloud, the Divi Project blockchain serves as the core of the Divi network of technologies. Thanks to a keen understanding of the divide that separates the mainstream from the crypto world, the Divi team is able to create solutions to the industry's biggest problem: adoption by non-technical users. Divi's user-friendly, one-click solutions aim to bring blockchain-based payments into modernity with great UX. In this podcast, we will cover all aspects of cryptocurrency, hot topics, and technology as worldwide adoption grows.