TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - #731: Fixing Broken Bitcoin Tax Policy with Andrew Gordon

Episode Date: March 25, 2026

Marty sits down with Andrew Gordon to discuss the IRS's aggressive new crypto audit tactics, problematic tax reporting requirements like Form 1099-DA, and the urgent need for legislative reforms including a de minimis exemption and voluntary disclosure program. Andrew on X: https://x.com/accounting Gordon Law: https://gordonlaw.com/ STACK SATS hat: https://tftcmerch.io/ Our newsletter: https://www.tftc.io/bitcoin-brief/ TFTC Elite (Ad-free & Discord): https://www.tftc.io/#/portal/signup/ Discord: https://discord.gg/VJ2dABShBz Opportunity Cost Extension: https://www.opportunitycost.app/ Shoutout to our sponsors: Bitkey https://bitkey.world/ Bitcoin 2026 - Las Vegas http://bit.ly/3NA9xQh OPNEXT https://tinyurl.com/tftc2026 Unchained https://unchained.com/tftc/ Salt of the Earth: https://drinksote.com/tftc Join the TFTC Movement: Main YT Channel https://www.youtube.com/c/TFTC21/videos Clips YT Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUQcW3jxfQfEUS8kqR5pJtQ Website https://tftc.io/ Newsletter tftc.io/bitcoin-brief/ Twitter https://twitter.com/tftc21 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/tftc.io/ Nostr https://primal.net/tftc Follow Marty Bent: Twitter https://twitter.com/martybent Nostr https://primal.net/martybent Newsletter https://tftc.io/martys-bent/ Podcast https://www.tftc.io/tag/podcasts/

you've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free if you talk about a fed just gone nuts all all the central banks going nuts so it's all acting like safe haven i believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency bitcoin wins in the world of fiat currencies bitcoin is the victor i mean that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin. If you're not paying attention, you probably should be. Andrew Gordon, welcome to the show, sir. Well, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to have you. And like I was just mentioning, I feel fortunate to get some of your time here at the tail end of March. It is, I'm sure, a busy season for you as we approach

april 15th um and we're sitting down today to talk about uh the intersection of bitcoin crypto and accounting and for anybody who's listening or watching and is unaware andrew uh is the managing attorney at gordon law group he has both a jd and a cpa uh he's clerked at the irs office of chief counsel and chaired an irs fraud trial uh and he's been focused on bitcoin and crypto taxes since 2014 with over a thousand clients served and um you made a bit of a wave a few weeks ago flagging an audit file or an audit survey that the irs is sending out to bitcoin and crypto holders uh when they're being audited and it's asking for a a lot of information and puts uh potential and puts individuals a potential risk of perjury if i understand correctly is that

true. Yeah, yeah, that's right. And like you said, Marty, I've been working in crypto tech since 2014, which feels like a lifetime in crypto, although it was only a little over 10 years ago. And although we've got an administration that's very pro-crypto, what we've seen over the last couple of years, especially, is more and more crypto audits. And what we're talking about is Most recently, the IRS, even though there's all this movement towards regulatory clarity and pro-crypto legislation, that the IRS is now using this very extreme form, in fact, a form like nothing I've seen in the last 10 years, working in crypto or even just working in IRS audits, that is extremely detailed. two pages, listing out different exchanges, but requiring a yes or a no next to each one, dates that they're used. But the part that's most concerning about this new form is the potential implications. It requires a signature under penalties of perjury. So if you get it

wrong, you'd be criminally charged with perjury. And that's just bringing this to a new level, truly like nothing we've seen before. and what is it about the the particular sort of ass that the irs is making and the the threat of perjury that's that's different is it an extension beyond what they would typically do outside of bitcoin and crypto yeah well i think one of the first problems is just the scope typically if you're being audited you're being audited for a specific year single year or certain years that they specify. They ask for information on those years. This form asks for you to answer about your crypto activity from the beginning of any activity all the way through the end of the

audit year. So it's basically opening up a magnifying glass to everything that you've done and potentially expanding that audit into other years by just answering this form. But we've helped clients over the years with IRS audits, even outside crypto, auditing their small businesses, just individual tax returns. And typically, if the IRS wants to know what bank accounts you use, they ask you. There's an information document request to identify the bank accounts you've used, not under penalties of perjury, not a, here's a two-page list of every single bank. You tell me what years you've ever used it. Because if you answer that wrong, you make an honest mistake. Now you're in a dispute about your intent.

Was that honest mistake or not? Those types of things don't exist outside of crypto, right? With bank accounts, it's what banks did you use? So in a crypto audit, what they could simply do is ask, which crypto exchanges did you use? Answer that question in writing. That's standard. having a form like this that has all of these details where if you you have to check yes or no

right it's not and and the problem is confusion right a lot of these different exchanges they've changed names over the years the the formal name that they're potentially using maybe not even really a name that you even heard of before so you check the box no but really should have been yes and the people online have said, well, look, if it's a unintentional or misunderstanding, then you didn't necessarily commit perjury. Well, I'd never want to be into a dispute with the IRS or the Department of Justice of whether or not I made an honest mistake, right? You're now already in a problem. So there's just, it's creating all these additional risks for taxpayers where if there's an unfriendly IRS in the future,

an administration that doesn't like crypto wants to weaponize this information, they've got statements, perjury statements, potentially that can be weaponized against the everyday taxpayer. And so what is the first thing you tell a client when they receive this form? What are like the top, like you should do this,

you should not do this? well number one if you haven't retained counsel you should right uh people call us all the time think they could take on the irs on their own some cases maybe you can but this is this is not one of them uh if you're under audit crypto related and especially most of the people we talked to and and just last week had uh someone reach out to us that didn't report crypto on their taxes now being audited. Or very common, they reported some of it. Maybe their U.S. exchange made parts of it, maybe what they cashed out, now being audited. So the number one thing is make sure that you have representation and you have that attorney-client privilege to talk through these risks

so that they can understand what is the actual exposure. Are there years of unreported income and gains? Did you do your best, but you just missed some? Or did we just leave it all off? And depending on, to begin with, the scope and the potential exposure, that drives the strategy on how to respond to this. Overall, one of the options always is just respond to the IRS. Fill this form as best as you can but in many cases that is not a preferential option that trying to work out with the irs a a different way to answer the questions perhaps just directly to an idr an information document request there's other ways so number one is is make sure you have representation and then once you have that representation go through your situation and

and then identify the options based on that that best fit you. Maybe it's cooperation to some extent. Maybe it's no cooperation at all. But it really depends on the risks. What's the extent of the amount of people who are being pulled into these types of audits? And I guess the frequency, you've been in this for 12 years now, it's been increasing, decreasing, does it depend on the administration? What we've seen is a steady increase in IRS audits. Despite the pro-crypto administration, despite the IRS generally having less enforcement, less people, there has been, in our experience, a steady increase in crypto audits.

And we expect this, unfortunately, to only increase this year, next year, and in coming years because the IRS is getting more information than ever before on U.S. crypto trading activity. Historically, it has been almost completely up to the taxpayer to report. The IRS will have to issue summonses, enter into information sharing agreements to get this kind of data. now with 1099-DA reporting, which started with tax year 2025, all U.S. exchanges are reporting to the IRS all of the trades, all of the sales that occur. So now the IRS is having line-by-line transaction data of all the sales on U.S. exchanges. And although one may think that, well, this is just limited to U.S. exchanges, it now gives them the breadcrumbs to identify the other activity, to see the transfers in from your non-U.S. exchanges. There's just so much

information that the IRS is going to be receiving that it's what we expect is that there will be not only more audits, but more just IRS notices automatically being sent. There's articles about how the IRS is using now AI to identify people for audits. We expect that that's going to increase, especially with all this new tax reporting that's happening, that the IRS is going to take that information, send notices, send tax bills, send audits in the coming years. Yeah. And the 1099 DA, not only the exchanges reporting your transactions in a given tax year to the IRS, but they have to assume a cost basis of zero, correct? And so it introduces this problem of maybe being overtaxed because the exchanges are just running with the assumption that

you mined Bitcoin when it was first launched in 2009 or something like that. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Crypto is unlike anything in the modern financial world, especially when it comes to tax reporting with stocks, other securities. You get this wonderful tax report at the end of the year, shows you if you traded on Robinhood or wherever it may be, get a tax form. It shows you what you sold, what you bought it for, your gains or losses. You plug it into TurboTax and away you go. With crypto, that form historically has not existed. It's on us to get all of our transaction data, pay a professional like us,

or use the crypto tax software to generate those results. Treasury and the IRS in their infinite wisdom mandated for 2025, a new tax form 1099 DA attempts to solve this problem, but also gives the IRS a lot of information towards enforcement. But the problem with crypto is very few people just buy and sell on one exchange. They're buying in one place, transferring to another, bringing it to their cold storage wallet, splitting it in half. There's so much movement. And with that, it's nearly impossible without professional or third-party software to trace your cost basis or what you originally bought it for. This new tax form that's being issued this year for tax year 2025, the IRS has required that exchanges report your sales or your sales price or proceeds

what you sold it for, but not your cost basis, in part because the exchanges are struggling to get that data. But the IRS said, well, this year, just tell us what it was sold for. The problem now is that it's on the taxpayers. It's on all of us to figure it out, right? Exchange is going to do it. So now we got to do it, right? The software out there struggles to do it. So we've got to do it. And the IRS is seeing those sale prices. And if you don't fill in that cost basis, it's assumed as zero, which means that whatever you sold it for is a complete gain potentially even a short-term gain uh which then heavily taxed paying a substantially amount substantial amount of tax that you really shouldn't because uh you don't have that cost

basis information yes and especially uh maybe not last year but this year if the price stays depressed you're going to want that cost basis so maybe you can report a loss on your on your uh holdings if uh if you had to sell below where you bought it from it is uh it is insane how invasive it has become. But this isn't the only tax problem that we're dealing with in Bitcoin and crypto. I mean, you mentioned, I've been following you on X, and you've been on the hill advocating for de minimis tax exemption, which could solve some of these problems too, and also give people a bit of breathing room when it comes to using this as a day-to-day money. Yeah, no, absolutely. We all know crypto is the future of commerce. Whether it's using Bitcoin or a stable coin, you need to be able to transact with crypto without having to have record keeping requirements.

If I've got to have a notepad or an app tracking every time I buy a cup of coffee with crypto and what I bought it for in the gains, that pushes away use. I mean, it's just backwards. It doesn't make sense. And that's what we're living in right now. I've got a client and we recorded a video. So we had to literally fill up a banker's box, a big cardboard box of transaction data and ship it to the IRS because the file was too large to e-file, too many transactions. Now, what did this all add to?

Tens of thousands of dollars, right? But the amount of transactions, because every penny has to be reported to the IRS, every penny transaction has to be reported with gain or loss calculated. It's absurd. It's keeping people from using it. And for a lot of our clients, it's even pushing them overseas. If you have to determine where you're setting up your crypto company, you can have US obligations where every penny's got to be reported or other countries where there's a much more logical tax system. And so, yes, we need changes, especially things like de minimis. The record keeping on that alone, it's not even so much about paying taxes on those amounts, but just having to account for every single dollar that you spend is it's just outrageous.

It really is. It really is. What in your mind would be a reasonable de minimis tax exemption price level? you know uh there's uh been some draft legislation in dc uh senator lummis uh has drafted legislation i believe it's got a i think it's a five thousand dollar aggregate um and you know somewhere around there i think is reasonable what we're looking for is an amount where when we're transacting with crypto that we don't have to do all that record keeping it's it's if there's large amounts being spent, I think we all understand, right? But when we're just trying to make everyday purchases or we're paying gas fees, paying fees on our transactions, it's this outrageous result where if you're paying a fee, now there's a tax on that and

you've got to report that in itself. We just need simplification overall. So I think it's a lot less about the aggregate aggregate amount then that we need just a way to have a simplified way to report these small transactions so freaks guess what just booked my tickets to vegas headed for bitcoin 2026 it's that time of the year april 27th to 29th in las vegas i'm gonna be there a ton of people are gonna be there you better get your ass there you know what it's a people are calling a bear market you know these are the best conferences i've been going since 2019 when it was in a parking garage in san francisco if you want to get the best possible ticket prices make sure you use our link in the code tftc you go to 2026.b.tc use the code tftc you'll get 10

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to BitChat, catered lunch, and access to the pub key after party. Wearing the hat, pub key after party. Up next is where builders meet capital, founders find funding, and companies source top talent. Plus meet institutional investors and developers from BlackRock, H.C. Wainwright and Bitcoin Infrastructure Corp. If you're at a venture fund or another finance firm, this is the event to learn more about the quantum computing, leading edge Bitcoin tech and topics that will define Bitcoin's futures. Go to opnext.dev for tickets and use the code TFTC to get 25% off a general admission or VIP ticket to the event. Again, that's opnext.dev, code TFTC for 25% off a ticket. I'll see you there. And so you've been on the Hill. I mean, I was supposed to record with you

in person last week, but schedules got misaligned and weren't able to sit down in person. What's it been like interacting with with politicians on the Hill? Are they receptive to this? Is it a lot of handholding and Bitcoin 101 and explaining how these things work or are more and more representatives and senators beginning to understand what's what's lying before them? Yeah, there has been incredible progress very quickly. And my day-to-day job is working with clients, tax reporting, handling audits, criminal investigations, seeing what really is involved with tax reporting for crypto in the United States. But over the last couple of years, we've brought these stories to D.C., having conversations with policymakers about how crypto is actually used, the potential for a chiropractor in Florida, for a Uber driver in North Carolina to generate life changing wealth. But at the same time, having these incredibly difficult tax situations, which are just crazy. And over the last couple of years, what I've seen in D.C. is a shift from what is crypto to how can we legislate effectively to make sure crypto stays in the U.S., which is incredibly refreshing.

The last decade, we've had administrations trying to kill crypto. We've advised clients countless times on leaving the country with their crypto businesses or even individually expatriating because of the climate that we're in. We now have people, we have senators, congressmen who want to have legislation that benefits crypto, keeps it in the United States. One of the most positive parts of the conversation has been the focus on taxes, especially crypto taxes. It's not the sexiest topic. Right. No one loves to talk about tax. Right. Except I do. I love that. But overall, people, you know, generally you start you're you're at a party and you start to talk about tax. you're not going to be the life of the story. But at the same time, taxes impact all of us. Every single crypto investor, every person watching this video in the U.S. has to report

crypto on their taxes. And many of them have stories of the difficulty of IRS notices of just trying to report, not knowing how to report. And there's now been more attention and focus on the tax issue specifically. It sounds like after clarity and market structure is that the attention is going to shift to crypto taxes, that the administration recognizes that crypto taxes are a problem. We need to fix it. I talk often about the comparison of crypto to opportunity zones. Opportunity zones are this tax break that Congress passed several years ago. And since then, there have been pages and pages, thousands of pages of guidance, of cases about opportunity zones. Yet 20,000 people, by some estimates, last year took advantage of it. Very small group.

Crypto, on the other hand, we have millions of people participating in crypto and something like 10 documents from the IRS on clarity. The government, the policymakers, people in treasury that I've spoken to understand this problem. They want to find solutions. And that's a big shift from the conversations that I had even a year or two years ago. So what I'm seeing is that there is focus on these actual issues. And hopefully, after we get done with clarity, that we start to actually see more emphasis on legislation to address these problems. Yes. And so, I mean, talked about the minimus and obviously the low-hanging fruit tax changes that could be made to make it easier for bitcoiners to go about their day without having to worry about

the irs coming down to them when it comes to the 1099 da and uh this hdaf form that they're sending out during audits what what changes would you like to see there if any well we need people at the irs that are informed about crypto and want to put in place policy that brings people into compliance generates revenue for the government while at the same time doesn't create fear in the everyday crypto investor of uh what happens if they come forward what happens in an audit how do i make sure an audit is is done fairly and gets to a just result not data that can be weaponized now or in the future uh towards other goals uh so forms like this form should not be part of an audit um criminal investigation or or more severe situations i i think that uh potentially but for

For an everyday crypto investor, everyday audit, having forms like this, also even just the tools the IRS is using in audits, we need to come from a place of understanding crypto and wanting to bring in compliance and get to the right result rather than just viewing every crypto investor as a criminal. So I think having people in place at the IRS policy that starts putting clarity on some of these issues so that the auditors have less discretion, but also getting rid of forms like this. It's just not necessary. Yeah, I think one of the main reasons why it made a big splash, obviously, people were thinking about all the exchanges that they may have used in the past that may not exist anymore. and thinking, oh, that's going to be a massive headache.

But another big one was the privacy intrusion, particularly for individuals holding Bitcoin and other crypto assets in self-custody using hardware wallets like Ledger, Trezor, using something like MetaMask. And I think the strongest reaction I saw when you posted the forum was, wow, they're really trying to tag and bag

where Bitcoin is sitting. And I think that is an important conversation that needs to be had is what right do individuals have to privacy over their financial assets, especially in a world and with these transparent ledgers that that exists now with Bitcoin. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think even personally, one of the most surprising things about this form was that it wasn't just centralized exchanges. They want to know about wallets. They want to know about DeFi, even just self-custody. wallets potentially that there aren't any transactions on and we have a right to privacy and then the government has been recognizing more and more so the need for privacy with

cryptocurrency and when it's just sharing information like this it creates a lot of risks and problems for the industry overall what's the uh what's like the worst case you've seen somebody who thought they were doing everything by the book got caught up in an audit and still um got caught in a little compliance trap oh gosh um you know well we've we've got a client that did his best to report advanced trader um trading thousands of times per year but it's not necessarily anything unusual um he did his best to report used uh professional crypto tax software uh to report under audit the irs took all his transactions through it and the software that they use

and they they have let's just say it's over 75 million dollars is what they think his gains are Now, the actual number, likely in the order of millions, but not 75 million. And now we've got an uphill battle of trying to argue to the IRS why their calculations are incorrect. But what we've seen in many audits, and this is just an example of it, is that they're using outdated software. They don't understand distinctions like wrapping, like entries into liquidity pools, even simple things, stable coins. that stable coins are actually tied to a dollar and i don't need to prove that i paid a dollar for it is they're actually a dollar pretty close to it not worth the fight over 99 cents irs want to say it's 99 cents go for it you want to say it's a dollar one fine but they're saying it's

zero is your cost basis um but overall we've we've got several audits where they think the gains are just drastically higher than what they actually are and we now have to argue and show why that's incorrect. This is taken going to appeals, sometimes even tax court. One story that less in terms of dollar, but I think perhaps more shocking, the client didn't report his stablecoin sales. He had, I think it was about $200,000 of stablecoins that he sold, didn't report it on his taxes. The IRS audited him, issued a notice, and said, well, if you didn't report any cost basis, you didn't report on your taxes, it's zero cost basis. As a result, he's got a $70,000 tax bill. We had to take that to tax court to argue to the IRS that stable coins actually were dollar-packed,

that it's not a 100% gain. So to me, that was an example of something that was just absolutely absurd. You shouldn't have to hire an attorney, go to tax court, or argue that it's dollar for dollar. The IRS should just know those types of things. So freaks, this rip of TFTC was brought to you by our good friends at BitKey. BitKey makes Bitcoin easy to use and hard to lose. It is a hardware wallet that natively embeds into a two or three multi-sig. You have one key on the hardware wallet, one key on your mobile device, and block stores a key in the cloud for you. This is an incredible hardware device for your friends and family, or maybe yourself who have Bitcoin on exchanges and have for a long time, but

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a bit frustrating to see that the irs is this ardent about um about uh targeting people and in bitcoin and crypto just targeting anybody in general for audits when when the federal government is taking those tax dollars and just furiously um putting it into programs they're being pillaged by overt fraudsters and yes they're starting to catch them but it seems uh to me at least that they've been able to get away with with overt pillaging of of public uh systems public uh benefit systems for quite some time now right you know i i i hear every day from crypto investors who want to pay their fair share uh the the industry despite what some policy makers view it uh we want to pay our taxes uh we want to pay the fair share we just

want to know what the rules are and we need a path where we're not afraid of audits we're not afraid if we do our best that they're going to penalize us or drag us through an audit for for years um But unfortunately, there just has not been a good path towards that. There hasn't been a way for people to come forward, know what they owe, pay that tax. And that's something that we desperately need. Whether you're in favor of this administration or not, what we do know is that tax revenue is vital. and the crypto industry, eventually we're going to all want to cash out and buy our islands and Lambos when Bitcoin hits a million dollars, right? I don't know about you, but that's my price,

right? When it's a million dollars, then I think it's time for the island. But that's what we're all waiting for. But we need to have a system where we can come forward, pay our taxes, and it's just unfortunately not been the way. It hasn't. And you've been advocating for a voluntary disclosure program. What would that look like? Yeah, that's correct. And to me, this is a no-brainer. So win-win. I got a call yesterday from someone who hasn't filed their taxes since 2017 because he made a lot in crypto in 2017. It was a bull market. 2018 crashed, made a lot. And he's afraid that if he comes forward, files his taxes, reports his crypto. He's going to be audited or even criminally investigated.

Now he doesn't have any or very little. He's lost much of it. But he's afraid that if he comes forward, he's going to have an investigation, have an audit. And he's afraid of that. And that's been his situation for years. As a result, he can't buy a house because he hasn't filed his taxes. All these results, all these repercussions, there needs to be a way where crypto investors can come to the IRS, file their old years of taxes, report their crypto as best as they can, right? There are crypto exchanges that you can no longer access your data, but the best that you can, and then pay the tax, maybe even a small penalty, a reduced penalty, and move on and have some sort of assurance from the IRS that you're not going to be criminally investigated in the

future. A program like this makes sense. It would drive billions of dollars for the federal government. It would allow people to finally pay their taxes, not be unfair, have cost basis that's reported. And what we're at right now is this inflection point where the IRS is going to start receiving all this 1099-DA information. And what are they going to do with that? They can either do nothing or they can do audits or investigations. Every investor that is receiving a 1099 DA that hasn't reported crypto in the past is now going to be sitting with a decision. Do I go back and try to report in the past? Do I ignore those earlier years? Do I say zero cost basis? It's a big mess. Maybe you're sitting here and you don't even know what I'm saying. You just know

it's a mess. A program like a voluntary disclosure program would be a way for these people to come forward. There's been precedent for this in the past. About 20 years ago, the IRS realized that people were putting money offshore into bank accounts, Swiss bank accounts, not realizing that they had to report that on your U.S. taxes. In fact, in the U.S., you've got to report your Swiss bank accounts. You got to pay tax on the interest. People just didn't know that. The rules weren't very clear. It wasn't a lot of education. The guidance wasn't great. The IRS created a program called the Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program, where people could come forward, in fact, with full amnesty. Pay your tax, no penalties, no investigations. Just pay your tax. There's been

precedent over the years in other areas other than crypto for these types of programs and what we're seeking is the same thing for crypto uh there are there are countless people who want program like this uh we just need a path forward for this to happen in your experience putting a putting the uh irs agent head on what do they perceive as like the lowest hanging fruit out there to trigger an audit of an individual is it not filing your taxes for a number of years and filing it one year and out of the blue you're um you're reporting all these crypto holdings is it simply you make a lot of money they're trying to target uh people over a certain wealth wealth bracket what's the the go-to trigger here

the unfortunate news to begin with and i'm not just trying to scare people out there but what we've seen over the last few years is that the irs sees the crypto industry as low-hanging fruit even been testimony about this crypto industry largely has not paid their taxes especially with bitcoin hitting over a hundred thousand dollars right there's no question to a lot of people in government or the IRS, there are people that have a lot of money that have not paid their taxes. So overall, the unfortunate news is the crypto industry has been a big target of enforcement. When I started my practice over 10 years ago, crypto was starting to be part of it in 2014, but it wasn't all what we did. We helped people with other types of audits. In fact,

in the beginning, it was mostly other types of audits. Now our practice is almost exclusively crypto audits because there's just so much demand there's so many crypto audits happening what we see as some of the common factors in these audits is often no crypto reporting at all despite clear indications that there's crypto using u.s crypto exchanges some of them even reporting over the years to the irs another being that they just reported the u.s centralized exchanges but the irs has through john doe summonses through agreements with places like binance have have gotten data that suggests that there's other exchanges or other other things out there to report what the irs is very bad at knowing

is how much what are the dollar amounts because crypto it's people that are trading you could have ten thousand dollars of crypto that looks like a million dollars in transactions if you're trading all day long um and that's why sometimes they target people who don't have substantial amounts of gains but just have a lot of activity because it looks like there's just a lot going on audits often begin because the irs has some information that's inconsistent with what's on your tax return and the irs is getting more and more and more information uh that they could then use and cross-reference against your taxes it makes sense are traders bottom of the low-hanging fruit for the irs typically i i guess so yes yeah it's fascinating stuff what um what advice

you have we're approaching uh april 15th here we've got uh what do we got seven 22 days until back season anybody who's listening to this saying oh crap i uh i've not been checking the boxes on the list that andrew is uh laying out here what is your advice to them well let's start with the current year. 2025 taxes due April 15th. If you used a U.S. exchange in 2025, they should have issued you a 1099-DA form. There's a couple exchanges that are late, to say the least, on issuing those forms, but you should have received one. If you haven't, the obligation is on you to go find it, download it online, make sure that you use it to file your taxes. That form is getting reported to the IRS. It needs to be consistent with what's on your

taxes. Don't ignore that form. Even if you didn't, again, get it in the mail, but you know you used the U.S. exchange, go try to download it. Work with a professional or use a crypto tax software to input the cost basis into all the missing spots on that 1099-DA form. This process is going to take time. It's not easy. One of the biggest suggestions that I have to people out there is file an extension for your taxes. Taxes are due April 15th, but you can extend that to October 15th, six months by filing an extension. It's automatically granted. It will give you the time to get all your records together, make sure that the 1099 is properly reported on your taxes. This is not an extension to pay. Your tax payment is still due April 15th. So if you

think you're going to owe something, you should make a payment and then file your extension. But overall, one of the best things you can do right now, especially if you have earlier years that you didn't report on your taxes, is file that extension. Then work with a professional to get the earlier years caught up, the current year, get it all calculated, file one time correctly. We've worked with countless people over the years that have used do-it-yourself software, tried their best to fill in gaps, and then get audited. The amount that you will spend having to deal with that is exponentially more than just hiring a professional trying to do it their first time. And if you didn't report those earlier years, it makes sense to talk to someone

to see which year should you report. There are statutes on some of these years. I'm not in favor of paying the IRS the maximum possible, right? No one wants to pay the most, right? But we need to pay the proper amount and make sure that we're doing things to not be targeted or audited by the IRS, and assessing how many years to go back, how far can they actually audit you. These are all important decisions to have. But overall, you can't ignore crypto taxes. You can't just say, hey, it happened last year. I'm going to start reporting going forward the right way.

You can still be audited for several years backwards. Awesome. And then in terms of aiding your efforts on Capitol Hill and the advocacy for sensible tax policy, what should anybody who's listening do in terms of helping get more sensible legislation across the line? Yeah, what has been surprising and very positive to me is the policymakers want to hear stories. They want to understand how we're being impacted by crypto, by tax policy, by these audits. Reach out to me. Share your story. Let me know how crypto taxes have impacted you.

We also want to make sure that as policy is written in D.C., that it's not just the big players, especially with clarity. There are only so many voices on policy in D.C. on the Hill. You hear kind of the same stories happening, the same policy points being advocated for. As things shift to crypto taxes, which impacts all of us, what we are fighting to make sure happens is that all of our voices are heard. The everyday investors, small businesses, not the big crypto Wall Street companies. I won't mention them. But if you look at clarity, it's overwhelmed by certain voices. but crypto is not that necessarily it's all of us it's all of us trying to build invest create

things um so uh follow follow us online join our events um and share your stories it's one of the easiest things you can do is reach out to me and share your story well andrew thank you for uh taking time during sax tax season to uh to share your story it may be sax season too i mean Chicago area is very good jazz, uh, in the city and blues. So, uh, thank you for taking time to share your story. This is a very helpful and I'm sure, uh, it's going to stress a lot of listeners out, but it's better to understand this stuff than not to. Absolutely. Well, thank you for having me and bringing attention to this, this important topic, but one that I get it. Not everyone wants to pay attention to. Yeah. Well, hopefully we can do this again as, uh, as things progress and,

we get more information and hopefully better laws around Bitcoin tax policy. Absolutely. Alright, peace and love, freaks. Thank you for listening to this episode of TFTC. If you've made it this far, I imagine you got some value out of the episode. If so, please

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