How to calculate profits with FIFO?

[Freefall101]

Hi there,

i'm almost going crazy while searching for a tool to calculate my profits with FIFO. I got more than 2000 transactions in an excel spreadsheet and all i want is using FIFO to figure out my profits (german tax law requires FIFO). I tried several excel sheets but nothing was satisfying. How do you guys solved it? Anyone got the same problem?

Thanks in advance

Freefall101

[HabBear]

I tried several excel sheets but nothing was satisfying. How do you guys solved it? Anyone got the same problem?

To make sure we're clear on the concept of FIFO (first in, first out), when you sell your currency (Bitcoin or whatever) you're using the cost basis of the first purchases you made.

So if you have all of your transactions in a spreadsheet can we assume you have the date of the purchase as well? I'd separate your Buy and Sell transactions, use separate sheets or use a column devoted to it which you can filter on. Where you've tracked your buys create a new column that allows you to mark whether you've "used" the transaction for cost basis of a sale. You can put an "X" in that column for the transaction line item when you've used it. Then link the sales to the buys. If you've owned Bitcoin for a long time it's likely that your sales will not be for as much Bitcoin as your buys were years ago. So one buy cost basis could cover several of the sales. As you check off the buy transactions that have been used for sales you can filter those transaction line items out.

It'll be tedious in Excel, but not complicated.

There's probably a software other than Excel that will do this for you, but you'll need to enter your 2000+ transactions first into that new software...perhaps it can accept an export from Excel.

Talk us through the specifics of your challenge and we can help you!

[Freefall101]

Thanks for your reply. I am not sure if i got you right: your talking about a manual solution, right? This will take years... There must be a automatic solution somewhere, for banks or professional traders at least... any ideas?

thanks,

Freefall101

[odolvlobo]

Hi there,

i'm almost going crazy while searching for a tool to calculate my profits with FIFO. I got more than 2000 transactions in an excel spreadsheet and all i want is using FIFO to figure out my profits (german tax law requires FIFO). I tried several excel sheets but nothing was satisfying. How do you guys solved it? Anyone got the same problem?

Thanks in advance

Freefall101

I think all you must do is compute the total number of coins you have sold and the total of the amount you received. Then sum the costs of the coins in order of purchase date up to the number that were sold.

[aplistir]

An old thread, but since it is up again, I will reply.

In my country we also need to use FIFO when selling stocks, but that is only if you can't show exactly which stocks you sold.

SO if we can show that we sold the most recently bought stocks and not the first ones, then we can just report the last stocks instead of the first ones.

This can be done, if you have different stock accounts. One for old HODL stocks and a different account for eg. day trading.

With bitcoin, showing exactly which coins you are selling should be easy, because you can have coins bought at different times in different addresses. AND you can also have a proof of which coins you sold. Eg. I bought 1BTC at this price, moved it to this address and now moved it back to an exchange and sold it with this price.

IF you can prove you sold exactly those coins, I bet you do not have to use FIFO in any country.

Its completely different, if you keep all your coins in one address, or in an exchange, when you cannot prove witch coins you sold. Then FIFO is the only logical way.