Transactions fees & taxable events (each trade)

[#1]

When making a transfer there is often transaction fees involved. 

The last time I checked the ATO website there was no indication that every trade would be a tax event. I was under the impression it was determined a tax event at the time of exchanging FIAT for crypto & vice-versa.

Please recommend a suitable means of going back over the past year of transactions, most of which have not been recorded & figuring out where the funds were transfered to / from, the transaction fees involved, the time/date of the transactions. Please note that a few on my coins are "anonymous" coins and traceability is impossible.

I fear that the ruling of; "each trade is a taxable event" is going to enforce me to sell my total investment.

I am on a minimum wage job. Last year I decided to risk my hard earned savings in a high risk asset. The risk I took turned out, I have made a substantial profit. I exchanges some of my high risk coins (which I made huge gains on) for safer ones. This being a taxable event means that Capital Gains applies. Since the market has crashed. The Capital Gains I have to pay on this event is more than what my total investment is currently worth. In order to pay the tax on my gains I will need to sell my current investment & rebuy in order to reduce my captial gain. I have never cashed back into FIAT. I don't want to either.

The current ruling seems as though it is forcing investors hands and actually affecting the market.

Please change to only taxable event when cashing back to FIAT..

Regards

CryptoCurious 

[#2]

Hi Cryptocurious (love the handle!),

The first place i would suggest checking (if you havent already) are the exchanges themselves. See if they can provide a electric statement showing the intial conversion from AUD to preferred token/crypto to establish your cost base. I acknowledge myself through hard won experience how hard this can be after the fact, but it is the buyers responsibilty to maintain and upkeep accurate records of such purchases..

As i work currently for the ATO i provide the above advice simply to assist fellow community members like yourself. Im also aware that our community moderator has also provided valuable links for you to use to best decribe your circumstances. Check the top of the cryptocurrency thread for this information.

I wish you the best of luck..!

[#3]

The problem is many if not most of us trade on foreign exchanges far removed from fiat currency. There is no conversion from AUD. There's no liquidity on Australian exchanges so you trade overseas.
Another problem is that someone exchanging X token for Y token is expected to pay fiat CGT even though it has nothing to do with fiat, is in no way linked, and is still at great risk of losing value. There is no real gain in crypto to crypto. The only gain of any practicality is a gain into AUD. Until then, your portfolio has little to no real world value.

[#4 · Accepted solution]

Hi @Cryptocurious

Thanks for your continued interest in cryptocurrency, we’ve been working hard with our specialist areas to get the answers you’re looking for.

You may already be aware that we’ve recently updated our Tax treatment of cryptocurrency web content to provide additional advice, but we’ve also started a consultation process to obtain feedback from the community on:

• record-keeping as it relates to cryptocurrency transactions, and
• exchanging one cryptocurrency for another cryptocurrency.

We’d love to hear from you! Join the discussion and have your say by going to our Let’s Talk  consultation page before Friday 20 April 2018.

Thanks, Bree H.