Signature Campaigns taxes

[cellard]

I'm not an accountant, but...

For a US citizen you should report any signature campaign taxes at the moment you sell your bitcoin. If you were paid in bitcoin for the signature campaign, the bitcoin you earned would change your cost basis. Now you earned an amazing 0.01 bitcoin for a signature campaign. Your cost basis for this 0.01 bitcoin is 0, since you didn't pay anything for it. To keep things simple, I would recommend keeping your bitcoin separate or keeping all the documentation you need to separate your dates on your tax forms. But lets imagine you didn't keep any documentation or the IRS thought your proof was insufficient. You will likely have to pay taxes on the full 0.01 bitcoins. If you sold the 0.01 bitcoins for say, $120 you would pay the capital gains tax of 15% on the full $120.

This isn't even the main problem. Im not sure if you should declare it as income tax or as you say, 0 cost basis investment, of course you will always pay some tax in any case, the main problem is if you did not keep track record to prove where your bitcoins come from, they could simply claim that the origin could be from drug dealing or some criminal activity, note the "could". You can't prove it, they can't prove it, there is a conflict there. This situation varies a lot depending jurisdiction. Is this grey area that scares me the most. Worst case scenario and you will lose your coins as they confiscate them due "Illegal assets" or something.

For instance, many exchanges are now dead and people have lost tons of track records, or even current exchanges have extremely poor policies in trackrecord keeping, for instance Livecoin is an absolute mess which keeps only the last 30 days of trades, so I have lost some trading records there... honestly it is a nightmare trying to keep track of everything. Now if you try to sell some of these coins involved in lost records you may have problems. Like I said, a total nightmare.

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[Tigorss]

It is true that it is very difficult to prove ownership of crypto done by the taxpayer, and I honestly have never paid taxes from the results of crypto, and probably because there is no rule in my country.

we need to know there are several types of tax related crypto and it also can apply depending on where we are in the country because there are some countries that make taxation policy on crypto and there are countries that exempt such taxes as perceived by me there is no tax for bitcoin users but we are taxed only when redeeming the bitcoin

[sheenshane]

It is true that it is very difficult to prove ownership of crypto done by the taxpayer, and I honestly have never paid taxes from the results of crypto, and probably because there is no rule in my country.

we need to know there are several types of tax related crypto and it also can apply depending on where we are in the country because there are some countries that make taxation policy on crypto and there are countries that exempt such taxes as perceived by me there is no tax for bitcoin users but we are taxed only when redeeming the bitcoin

Well, we were much luckier in our country did not implement any law regarding paying the tax of bitcoin that comes from the signature campaign but actually, we have a proof in our source of income that did not come from illegal activities or in money laundering that government strictly prohibited or the reason why you put into a jail to commit your punishment.
Yeah, we can still be paying tax when we convert our bitcoin into local fiat and buy goods.

[guybrushthreepwood]

This isn't even the main problem. Im not sure if you should declare it as income tax or as you say, 0 cost basis investment, of course you will always pay some tax in any case, the main problem is if you did not keep track record to prove where your bitcoins come from, they could simply claim that the origin could be from drug dealing or some criminal activity, note the "could". You can't prove it, they can't prove it, there is a conflict there. This situation varies a lot depending jurisdiction. Is this grey area that scares me the most. Worst case scenario and you will lose your coins as they confiscate them due "Illegal assets" or something.

For instance, many exchanges are now dead and people have lost tons of track records, or even current exchanges have extremely poor policies in trackrecord keeping, for instance Livecoin is an absolute mess which keeps only the last 30 days of trades, so I have lost some trading records there... honestly it is a nightmare trying to keep track of everything. Now if you try to sell some of these coins involved in lost records you may have problems. Like I said, a total nightmare.

Then keep records. The bitcoin blockchain is one entire public ledger so it's not difficult to find your transactions nor will it be for the tax authorities. Besides, if there's no link from the money going to you then there's obviously no link that the money came from crime either and they can't prosecute you based on nothing or mere suspicions. The Tax authorities likely won't be as lazy or as stupid as those who are claiming they've kept no records so they'll be tracing those funds if they want to prosecute and they'll either find that you've earned them legitimately or that you've been doing something criminal. If anyone is worried about being painted as as a digital drug dealer then keep records. It's not hard to keep a spreadsheet updated every time you receive a bitcoin payment and this is something you should be doing anyway for your own records.

[Nanashev]

Interesting question. Taxing bounty hunters on signature campaign will be quite unfair. I think there is no fixed amount when it comes to how much people receive for the campaigns.The amount members earn from these campaigns are not huge enough to go through taxation. Besides, some  of the the tokens do not even go on exchange at all. What about the scam bounties too? bitcoin does not operate exactly like fiat currencies so lets appreciate the differences and forget about taxation. A friend of mine who introduced mine to signature campaigned warned me not to depend solely on it because its not a full time profession that you can earn huge sums from.

[guybrushthreepwood]

Interesting question. Taxing bounty hunters on signature campaign will be quite unfair. I think there is no fixed amount when it comes to how much people receive for the campaigns.The amount members earn from these campaigns are not huge enough to go through taxation. Besides, some  of the the tokens do not even go on exchange at all. What about the scam bounties too? bitcoin does not operate exactly like fiat currencies so lets appreciate the differences and forget about taxation. A friend of mine who introduced mine to signature campaigned warned me not to depend solely on it because its not a full time profession that you can earn huge sums from.

And yet there are people earning thousands of dollars on signature campaigns who have made it their full time "job". Nobody is interested in ill-informed opinion here but facts, regardless of how "unfair" you think paying taxes are doesn't mean they're not due. I'm sure you will find the fines for failing to report income or paying due taxes will be quite unfair also, so that's something you should take into consideration before you decide to either ignore them or refuse to pay them.

[Bharat24]

If your country is serious about signature compaigns taxes, then let is prove your participate in the signature compaign.

[kwabeedat]

I don't know about this but does one pay taxes if a company one works for is not registered in the country you find yourself? If not then I think we're not obliged to pay any tax to anyone, but where they can get tax from is when you're cashing out. You'll definitely need to pay for transaction fees and I think the banks already inculcate that in our fiat/crypto exchange fees.

[guybrushthreepwood]

I don't know about this but does one pay taxes if a company one works for is not registered in the country you find yourself? If not then I think we're not obliged to pay any tax to anyone, but where they can get tax from is when you're cashing out. You'll definitely need to pay for transaction fees and I think the banks already inculcate that in our fiat/crypto exchange fees.

If you don't know then why are you spreading misinformation and causing even more confusion for people? A company doesn't have to be registered in your home country for you to be able to work for it. If you're a self-employed contractor then you can work anywhere and you are responsible for paying your own taxes on income earned and you should look up your local tax laws to find out how much you should be paying. And as I've said before banking or exchange fees are not taxes nor do they pay taxes for you.

[Blondy12]

Now first of all I live in spain and I'm wondering if someone has ever paid taxes with money acquired from signature campaigns here. I made a decent amount of money a year ago because campaigns were giving 0.03-0.04 per week. I wouldn't really know how to pay taxes if I need to, would this count like a job and how exactly would someone prove they got their bitcoins from signature campaign , seems quite difficult.

Edit

A few options are presented:

1. Don't say anything, it's virtually impossible for any tax agency to find out what you have. However eventually they might be able to and you could face serious problems.

2. Mark it as freelance work and a tax rate will be applied to it, up to 50% (reported by an user) It seems that they wont ask for much information or proof as long as you are declaring it intentionally.

3. Simply spend bitcoins or any other cryptocurrency that you earned without ever converting it to fiat because cryptocurrencies are usually not taxable in most European countries.

Signature campaigns reward is such a small amount to be considered as taxable. I think that bitcoin is not taxable not unless we converted it into fiat therefore it will be consider as our income and the government has the right to put taxes on it bit still it depends on how big amount is it. Actually i am into long term investment and my bitcoins are still intact and not a lawyer aswell. So my ideas are not that broad. I just speak on what i think it was.

[pereira4]

Then keep records. The bitcoin blockchain is one entire public ledger so it's not difficult to find your transactions nor will it be for the tax authorities. Besides, if there's no link from the money going to you then there's obviously no link that the money came from crime either and they can't prosecute you based on nothing or mere suspicions. The Tax authorities likely won't be as lazy or as stupid as those who are claiming they've kept no records so they'll be tracing those funds if they want to prosecute and they'll either find that you've earned them legitimately or that you've been doing something criminal. If anyone is worried about being painted as as a digital drug dealer then keep records. It's not hard to keep a spreadsheet updated every time you receive a bitcoin payment and this is something you should be doing anyway for your own records.

Many people lost records by accident.

Cryptsy, Mintpal, Gox, many many other random exchanges of back in the day, dead and so is your altcoin trading history, what then? You didn't do anything illegal, only trade BTC for alts back and forth, BTC earned in sig campaigns, made some gains and so on, but the trading history was lost in the hack/bankruptcy/whatever random reason these shitty exchangers died randomly. Many of us are affected by this. I have records, but not from Mintpal!

And even if you have records, is it enough? they could claim the screenshot or excel spreadsheet file is fake. Why should they believe it? no way to know by looking at blockchain transactions either. If they believe spreadsheets and screenshots, people could just fake these and launder criminal money.

These doubts, lead people to just hold in BTC.

In some countries, doubt may be enough for confiscation. You don't know every jurisdiction in the world.

The mixed coins are a good point too. If you ever used a mixer, to test, then these coins are lost, as in, you can never sell them. There is a risk that the mixed coins you receive have some criminal links... it would be a problem selling these coins in an exchange, unfortunately. Some people didn't think about this years ago, now they are stuck with never selling, or never being able to buy anything big, that could raise government alarms. They could ask, and then you couldn't explain the origin, since the inputs are mixed.

You must keep track of every input and output of transactions, very annoying but necessary.

[Rustamm]

Now first of all I live in spain and I'm wondering if someone has ever paid taxes with money acquired from signature campaigns here. I made a decent amount of money a year ago because campaigns were giving 0.03-0.04 per week. I wouldn't really know how to pay taxes if I need to, would this count like a job and how exactly would someone prove they got their bitcoins from signature campaign , seems quite difficult.

Edit

A few options are presented:

1. Don't say anything, it's virtually impossible for any tax agency to find out what you have. However eventually they might be able to and you could face serious problems.

2. Mark it as freelance work and a tax rate will be applied to it, up to 50% (reported by an user) It seems that they wont ask for much information or proof as long as you are declaring it intentionally.

3. Simply spend bitcoins or any other cryptocurrency that you earned without ever converting it to fiat because cryptocurrencies are usually not taxable in most European countries.

As always, taxation must be based on the country of residence. We must monitor the legislation of our country in the field of taxation of the crypto currency. After all, there are no two countries with the same taxation and even such a specific object of taxation as a crypto currency. In general, from the practice of other countries, we can conclude that this depends on the amount of revenue from the received tokens and how you did with them. But if the tax authorities do not bother you about this, then it is better not to raise this issue.

[Oceat]

Some countries doesn't recognize this yet and yet more people are still not telling it to their government except for their personal information registered in their country's exchanges. Most exchanges doesn't accept crypto as a main source of income that's why you have to put your previous works there in order for them to accept it because they were under the government banks which provides money to every transaction of crypto they made.

[btcrich2020]

It is taxable because if you hold the Bitcoin without withdrawing them to your fiat currency then there is no need to pay taxes on it. As long as if you hold the Bitcoin which you are getting through the signature campaign then there is no need to pay taxes on it. The only thing when you convert to your fiat currency you need to pay taxes, once governments legalise the Bitcoin then you need to pay taxes on Bitcoin without even converting to fiat currency also.

[starplaks]

If you use Fiat means that you have to pay taxes by law, but if in the crypto currency, then there is no need!

[guybrushthreepwood]

Many people lost records by accident.

It's your own responsibility to keep records backed up. Do you just keep your bitcoins in once place and if they get stolen, lost or destroyed you're shit outta luck? You'll have to check with your local tax authority on what excuses they will accept, though. I'm sure if your house burns down then they would make an exception for that, but not if you just claim "my dog ate my tax records" or "I lost them".

Cryptsy, Mintpal, Gox, many many other random exchanges of back in the day, dead and so is your altcoin trading history, what then? You didn't do anything illegal, only trade BTC for alts back and forth, BTC earned in sig campaigns, made some gains and so on, but the trading history was lost in the hack/bankruptcy/whatever random reason these shitty exchangers died randomly. Many of us are affected by this. I have records, but not from Mintpal!

Well this is something you'd have to tell them and hope they understand. It certainly isn't an excuse for not paying taxes though, otherwise everyone would do it. If you can prove an exchange went down or lost your details then I'm sure they'd understand, but you should be keeping records as soon as you make the transactions to avoid any issues further down the line.

And even if you have records, is it enough? they could claim the screenshot or excel spreadsheet file is fake. Why should they believe it? no way to know by looking at blockchain transactions either. If they believe spreadsheets and screenshots, people could just fake these and launder criminal money.

These doubts, lead people to just hold in BTC.

How do any other businesses pay their taxes? How does somebody who sells cakes out of a cake shop prove they sold as many cupcakes as they claimed? How much did they actually spend on sugar and flour? You keep records and receipts. Businesses keep spreadsheets of in goings and outgoings and pay taxes on their profits. People can just make up a spreadsheet and receipts of course, but if you ever get audited you'll have to provide reasonable proof to back up your claims. Keep records of every bitcoin you receive and every time you sell them. Take screenshots of your transactions and you usually get some sort of email receipt when you cash out coins and that is good enough proof. You people seem to be looking for excuses to try get out of paying taxes, but believe me, your tax authority will not accept any of these as valid excuses. You'll get fines and possibly even jail time if they can prove you have purposely avoided paying taxes due and all the excuses of "I didn't know what taxes to pay", or "it's too difficult to know how much I should be paying" will just be laughed at in court.

[Soots]

Many people lost records by accident.

It's your own responsibility to keep records backed up. Do you just keep your bitcoins in once place and if they get stolen, lost or destroyed you're shit outta luck? You'll have to check with your local tax authority on what excuses they will accept, though. I'm sure if your house burns down then they would make an exception for that, but not if you just claim "my dog ate my tax records" or "I lost them".

Cryptsy, Mintpal, Gox, many many other random exchanges of back in the day, dead and so is your altcoin trading history, what then? You didn't do anything illegal, only trade BTC for alts back and forth, BTC earned in sig campaigns, made some gains and so on, but the trading history was lost in the hack/bankruptcy/whatever random reason these shitty exchangers died randomly. Many of us are affected by this. I have records, but not from Mintpal!

Well this is something you'd have to tell them and hope they understand. It certainly isn't an excuse for not paying taxes though, otherwise everyone would do it. If you can prove an exchange went down or lost your details then I'm sure they'd understand, but you should be keeping records as soon as you make the transactions to avoid any issues further down the line.

And even if you have records, is it enough? they could claim the screenshot or excel spreadsheet file is fake. Why should they believe it? no way to know by looking at blockchain transactions either. If they believe spreadsheets and screenshots, people could just fake these and launder criminal money.

These doubts, lead people to just hold in BTC.

How do any other businesses pay their taxes? How does somebody who sells cakes out of a cake shop prove they sold as many cupcakes as they claimed? How much did they actually spend on sugar and flour? You keep records and receipts. Businesses keep spreadsheets of in goings and outgoings and pay taxes on their profits. People can just make up a spreadsheet and receipts of course, but if you ever get audited you'll have to provide reasonable proof to back up your claims. Keep records of every bitcoin you receive and every time you sell them. Take screenshots of your transactions and you usually get some sort of email receipt when you cash out coins and that is good enough proof. You people seem to be looking for excuses to try get out of paying taxes, but believe me, your tax authority will not accept any of these as valid excuses. You'll get fines and possibly even jail time if they can prove you have purposely avoided paying taxes due and all the excuses of "I didn't know what taxes to pay", or "it's too difficult to know how much I should be paying" will just be laughed at in court.

There's no specific bracket on how much tax percentage will be applied to signature campaigns. And yet there's no regulations on all cryptocurrency or bitcoin's decentralized currency to be taxable unless the country itself has their own tie ups against digital currency. I think people doesn't have an excuse here, but of course every country has their own rights towards digital currency transactions and with banking affiliations; the taxes were paid alone on its private sector that handles the bank. Government is the main controller of every currencies incoming and outgoing transactions from trading sites towards the local bank.

[pereira4]

It's your own responsibility to keep records backed up. Do you just keep your bitcoins in once place and if they get stolen, lost or destroyed you're shit outta luck? You'll have to check with your local tax authority on what excuses they will accept, though. I'm sure if your house burns down then they would make an exception for that, but not if you just claim "my dog ate my tax records" or "I lost them".



Well this is something you'd have to tell them and hope they understand. It certainly isn't an excuse for not paying taxes though, otherwise everyone would do it. If you can prove an exchange went down or lost your details then I'm sure they'd understand, but you should be keeping records as soon as you make the transactions to avoid any issues further down the line.

When I put my coins in Mintpal to trade I was waiting for confirmations to end, I went to sleep, woke up next morning, and then the exchange had disappeared, I was waiting for confirmations to take the trading history screenshot. This is plain bad luck, not a fucking excuse, it's what happened. It's more like what excuses they will find to confiscate my money.

Also some exchangers are straight scams, like Livecoin which says (in TINY font) "we only save records for the past 30 days". A lot of people didn't see the tiny font, now they lost many trading records, until they realize the stupid idea of not keeping records permanently or at least having it in big font. C'mon!! fuck that. These things just force people to hold these coins and never ever report. What would be the point anyway? you are already screwed.

How do any other businesses pay their taxes? How does somebody who sells cakes out of a cake shop prove they sold as many cupcakes as they claimed? How much did they actually spend on sugar and flour? You keep records and receipts. Businesses keep spreadsheets of in goings and outgoings and pay taxes on their profits. People can just make up a spreadsheet and receipts of course, but if you ever get audited you'll have to provide reasonable proof to back up your claims. Keep records of every bitcoin you receive and every time you sell them. Take screenshots of your transactions and you usually get some sort of email receipt when you cash out coins and that is good enough proof. You people seem to be looking for excuses to try get out of paying taxes, but believe me, your tax authority will not accept any of these as valid excuses. You'll get fines and possibly even jail time if they can prove you have purposely avoided paying taxes due and all the excuses of "I didn't know what taxes to pay", or "it's too difficult to know how much I should be paying" will just be laughed at in court.

I have all of my transactions in Bitcoin Core, I took screenshots of most transactions and trading history, but I was unlucky with Mintpal. Also I have some coins mixed, these I understand I can't never sell now.

Im not looking for excuses to not pay taxes, I just don't want them to find excuses to fuck my hard earned bitcoins up by stealing them from me because some unlucky moment which made me lose some of my trading history. Since there are no guarantees of what happens in this situation, it's safer to hold and look for other people's experience in the same situation, don't be a guinea pig for the goverment's legislation on crypto guys.

Again im not trying to not pay taxes, understand the situation here.

And if governments don't cooperate, they will just scare away holders which will leave to more friendly jurisdictions in this matter, and they will miss on all these juicy taxes while the friendlier country benefits.

[Tigorss]

I would say, i am paying tax not to the earning buy spending of fiats converted from bitcoin earned from signature campaign. Do you get me? Unless and until i keep hold of the crypto currencies back in my wallets, i do pay tax when the crypto currencies are exchanged into fiats and they are spent on buying goods and etc. Every service and goods do tax. This has become ever more worst after a new leader has taken over his role. Really pathetic to have him as a leader who is not worth to be even human.

to my knowledge as long as I join this forum and follow some signature campaigns at the time of payment I have never received tax or there is a tax bill such as reduced fee or anything else, but I am taxed when sending my bitcoin to lan wallet and that too small.

[cellard]

Im interested in knowing if OP ever cashed out some of his bitcoin gains obtain through signature campaign participation. He is still active, he was posting 2 days ago.

I would like to know how it went for you, which information did they request when you cashed out and when filing taxes (how did you prove licit origin of funds). Also did you get hit by any penalties for not paying taxes before or something? Let us know.