To the op. A lot about mining depends on the country you live in… Mining in the USD vs buying and hold Crypto coins has very different tax rules.
Under todays IRS guidelines buying 100 usd of any crypto coin is like buying a share of stock. No issues on tax until you sell or trade it.
Mining a coin or any part of a coin creates possible tax issue to exact moment you earn it.
If you are not in the USA forget any advice above.
I have an accounting background , I have a degree in accounting. I worked for the IRS for a bit. I have prepared tax returns.
So if you are usa based you need to consider tax rules just a bit more then some other countries.
For instance a year ago before the tax rulings of this year I would have told a guy with 2gh don't mine solo you may never earn anything at all.
Now if you have 1 usb stick to mine with mining solo with it placing it on a network that the 2 watts it uses does not matter you have a life long lottery ticket .
Here is a breakdown. an antminer u-2 costs about 20 usd on ebay.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=508876.0 it costs about .032 btc here that is about 15 usd.
just mine with it solo mining. if you ever hit a block the day you hit the block lets say a 25 coin block at 440 usd a coin = 11000 usd
you simply pay tax on the 11000 usd about 40 percent at the worst maybe 20 percent at the best.
same if you buy a gridseed and mine ltc solo.
If you want to pool mine the tax return is more difficult as each payout needs to be tracked and added up for taxes.
Since you have 1 stick you should mine solo you would never need to deal with it on your taxes unless you won a block.