But be careful! Actually read what your local tax office puts out. Assume nothing: it can be very easy to get yourself in to trouble.
For example:
- You buy BTC @ $1
- You exchange BTC @ $11 for $RANDOM
- You just made $10 :-) and you owe the taxman ~$3 (if you're in Australia)
- $RANDOM falls to ~$0
- So you didn't actually make a material profit
- But you still owe the taxman $3! (though you might be able to claim some sort of offset on your material loss of $RANDOM; IANAA)
- Now multiply all amounts by 10,000 and be sad
It's analogous to selling any asset. You buy gold, you sell gold at a profit and buy silver. You owe tax on the sale of the gold; you assume you'll pay this from the value you now hold in silver. The price of silver plummets. You still owe the tax on the sale of the gold.
>- But you still owe the taxman $3! (though you might be able to claim some sort of offset on your material loss of $RANDOM; IANAA)
From what I understand, you have to actually realize your losses/gains if you want to claim tax on them. So if $RANDOM drops to ~$0 then you can't use it for capital losses until you trade it to another crypto (or cash). You could probably just trade $RANDOM to something else and then back to realize the losses.
You handwave away $RANDOM falling to zero as something which doesn't count as a capital loss that you can carry forward to offset all future gains?
As another Australian you should really speak to an accountant if you ain't going to claim that massive loss because this is either comically wrong or intentionally misleading advice.
It's just like any other capital gains event and very simple to grok.
https://www.ato.gov.au/General/Other-languages/In-detail/Inf...
But be careful! Actually read what your local tax office puts out. Assume nothing: it can be very easy to get yourself in to trouble.
For example:
- You buy BTC @ $1
- You exchange BTC @ $11 for $RANDOM
- You just made $10 :-) and you owe the taxman ~$3 (if you're in Australia)
- $RANDOM falls to ~$0
- So you didn't actually make a material profit
- But you still owe the taxman $3! (though you might be able to claim some sort of offset on your material loss of $RANDOM; IANAA)
- Now multiply all amounts by 10,000 and be sad
It's analogous to selling any asset. You buy gold, you sell gold at a profit and buy silver. You owe tax on the sale of the gold; you assume you'll pay this from the value you now hold in silver. The price of silver plummets. You still owe the tax on the sale of the gold.