Crypto Tax Calculation via Google Sheets (FIFO & ABC)
Doing taxes for cryptoassets is fun. Said no one. Ever. Until now!
I found it incredibly frustrating so far to do my taxes for crypto. If you want to do it right (which you should) you need to track every single trade no matter if fiat-to-crypto or crypto-to-crypto; and since this space is so new, there is very little consensus about what counts as a taxable event. Fortunately, there are great resources out there that can give more clarity such as this pretty detailed one from the UK government.
If this is not the first year you need to think about how to do your crypto taxes and if you love trying to be efficient as much as I do, you will probably have looked around for a better way to approach this than manual calculations. There are a bunch of online services and SaaS solutions out there which can calculate your capital gains taxes for a one-off payment or subscription. This is probably the easiest solution if you want to just be done with this and don’t care about a few hundred bucks of costs.
I didn’t feel like paying for something that should be easier and free.
Many people dealing with greater amounts would prefer employing a tax accountant who’d do this for you. The good: In most jurisdictions, the accountant would take on the liability for guaranteeing the right taxation so you won’t end up paying for calculation mistakes from earlier years (including interests). The bad: Very expensive option. Even more expensive if your typical tax accountant needs to get literate regarding taxes in crypto and you’re charged the time it takes for him/her to get up to speed.
I didn’t feel like paying for that either.
What I dislike the most about those 2 options is that tax is only done a posteriori. Only when you have to file your taxes you pay attention to it for a few days and push it to the back of your head again for the rest of the financial year. I prefer taking into account taxes during investment/divestment decisions I make during the year already. This is only possible if you’re actively and constantly aware of your tax situation. With FIFO in Germany, you can sell cryptoassets tax-free if you held (or HODL’ed) them for longer than a year. At the same time, you can realize losses at the end of the year to reduce your taxable income. So it really pays off to keep track of when you bought and sold what amounts. This gets super messy if you do more than 10 trades per year.
For those of you who know me, you’d anticipate me going out to build and open-source another one of those Google Sheets that I love. And you’re right!
I’m proud to present to you my Crypto Tax Calculation Sheet.
With this tool, it should be easy for you to calculate your crypto taxes; and the best is: You can use it for all future years to come — for free!
How To:
- Click on File > Make a copy
- Enable your Google Sheet to run the importJSON() function. See instructions here
- On the “Prices” sheet you need to add the tickers for coins you want to track, pull the historic and current prices via the Cryptocompare API. If the API doesn’t work (showing “#REF!”) just update the cells: copy, delete and paste back into the same cell
- On the “Tax” sheet, insert your chronological crypto trades data as seen in the example (columns A, C, and F). If you did a crypto-to-crypto trade please file it as 2 rows: Treat as 1) sell cryptoA for fiat and 2) buy cryptoB with same amount of fiat at the same time
- Your taxes are shown in the “Main” sheet. Adjust formulas if necessary
Note:
- I made this sheet with German policies in mind. Using FIFO, if you hold your cryptoassets for longer than a year you can sell it tax-free, otherwise 26.375% tax rate
- Prices are pulled via API for a certain time as specified on Cryptocompare. With daily volatilities, calculated spot prices may differ from the original rates when you executed your trades. Insert your more accurate pricing data where appropriate
The sheet will automatically calculate your capital gains taxes with both FIFO and ACB (average cost basis / allowable costs) principles. If you’re in a country with different short vs. long-term capital gains taxes and long-term ones for crypto are not 0%, you need to make a few adjustments to this sheet or move to Germany.
I hope this sheet can be useful to you. Please ping me any improvement suggestions and share your love on Twitter and Medium. Maybe someone out there would consider forking this and integrating exchange APIs so that trades are automatically pulled into the sheet. Happy BUIDLing!
If you’re able to save a bit on tax accountants with this please consider a small donation :)
BTC: 18APi2Nk1p5L7iEmJM7aG5h6GUqxvWEUS7
ETH: 0x0356fd48514D2EE84B13f06D741B62DEed351e23
Cheers,
Ha
About the author Ha Duong: I’m a Principal at Cambrial Capital, an institutional grade investment company deploying a fund of funds strategy focused exclusively on cryptoassets. Based in Berlin.
