Top 5 Crypto Tax Tools

So, you've sold the top and now it's time to buy a lambo? Well, not so fast my friend. Almost all countries in the world nowadays have tax obligations from crypto, be it capital gains tax, income tax or wealth tax.

Therefore, it makes sense to use a crypto portfolio and tax tracker, even before you sell you coins. Crypto tax software can help you find out your tax obligations and even optimize your tax bill, e.g. through tax loss harvesting or tax-privileged sales.

Crypto tax obligations vary

Cryptocurrency tax obligations vary significantly from country to country. In the US and the UK, cryptocurrency is subject to capital gains tax, and therefore considered in the same manner as any other financial asset like stocks or gold. Meanwhile, some other countries like Germany only consider short-term investments (holding period lower than one year) as taxable. Long-term gains are tax-exempt. And other countries like Switzerland follow yet different rules, by applying an annual wealth-tax.

Crypto Tax Software Comparison Matrix

Crypto tax software makes it so much easier to follow the local tax regulation in your country. Therefore, we compiled a list of five of the most well-known tools that help you file your taxes (In-depth reviews below table.)

In-Depth Reviews

Koinly

Founded in 2018, Koinly convinces with a well-designed user interface and dashboard and support for all major accounting methods and markets (35+ countries).

What makes Koinly truly stand out is its massive API support, be it for importing transactions from exchanges and wallets, or for exporting tax reports to more than five different tax apps like TurboTax.

One of the biggest downsides of Koinly is the lack of some more advanced reports like tax loss harvesting and tax-privileged coins.

Koinly is one of the more expensive crypto tax softwares in our review. On the plus side, you only need to pay the annual fee with Koinly when creating tax reports. So, if you're only interested in tracking your investments, Koinly will be free-of-charge for you.

Blockpit

Blockpit is a rather new contender in the space. The Austria-based service is mainly focussed toward the German-speaking markets and recently started a cooperation with Bitpanda, the leading crypto exchange in these countries.

Being still in earlier stages of development, the crypto tax software of Blockpit falls short in many aspects compared to more established providers. While the minimal user interface is very well designed and the platform is very pleasant to use, it lacks certain accounting methods and several reports such as tax loss harvesting and tax-privileged coins. It also only offers very few integrations, making data imports from smaller exchanges a hassle. Trading of crypto derivates and futures is currently not supported. There are also no data export capabilities for tax software like TurboTax.

Given the lack of these important features for professional users, Blockpit is best suited for smaller, long-term investors, who are users of one of the supported exchanges.

Given this focus of the platform, the pricing of Blockpit is somewhat irritating to us, with the cheapest paid plan starting at 25k transactions – an amount that only frequent traders require. In our opinion, the crypto tax software could really set itself apart from its competition, if it offered a cheaper plan for smaller investors (e.g. with up to 1k transactions) at a price point below $100.

Accointing

Accointing is a Zug, Switzerland, based crypto tax software provider that is targeted towards customers in the US, UK and German-speaking countries.

Accointing offers FIFO and LIFO as accounting methods, all the basic dashboards and charts that you would expect and comes with many integrations for importing transactions from exchanges and wallets. Additionally, there is a advanced report, namely the holding period report, which you can use for tax loss harvesting and tax-privileged sales. You can export your tax report to TurboTax, TacACT and Smartsteuer.

The tool also supports all important transaction types, such as staking, mining or airdrops, as well as margin and derivates trading.

The user interface of Accointing is relatively easy-to-use and comes with a satisfactory design. It could generally be somewhat cleaner and simpler. For instance, the top menu bar contains only three dropdowns with two items each – this could be simplified by listing six menu items and removing the dropdowns altogether.

Compared with its biggest local competitor, CoinTracking, Accointing falls short in terms of reporting capabilities. Beside the user interface, this is where Accointing has its biggest room to grow.

What's special about Accointing is that you can use it as a free portfolio tracker. Only once you create a tax reports, you will have to pay the annual fees. The annual fees are also just that, annual, and you can create as many tax reports for different years as you want during your subscription period. The pricing of Accointing is mid-range.

Cointracker

Cointracker is a San Francisco based crypto tax software company that is mainly focussed on English-language markets.

The tool offers most important accounting methods, including ACB and and Share Pool for Canada and the UK, respectively. Transactions in CoinTracker can be recorded via Exchange APIs, Wallet APIs, Wallet Adresses and CSV. The support of different Exchange APIs in CoinTracker is still somewhat limited, which makes importing transactions a bit of a hassle, because CSV files containing transactions need to be formatted in a very specific way.

The user interface of CoinTracker is generally well designed, albeit sometimes a bit over-engineered. For instance, there are only four items in the top navigation bar, with some drop downs only showing two items.

CoinTracker comes with most of the important features that you would expect in a crypto portfolio tracker and tax software. You can also import your tax report directly in TurboTAX and TaxACT. Professional users will miss support for futures and derivates trading, however. Users that are based in countries with special tax rules, such as tax exemption after a one year holding period, are better served with Accointing and Cointracking.

One of the biggest downsides of Cointracker is its steep price point. At $199 per year, you can only import up to 1,000 transactions, making it the most expensive crypto tax software in our review.

CoinTracking

Founded in 2012, Cointracking is probably one of the longest standing crypto portfolio trackers and tax apps there is.

Based in Munich, Germany, the company nowadays has a very international footprint, supporting almost all accounting methods and tax regulations you can think of. CoinTracking has also a wide language support, including all major languages and even smaller markets such as Polish or Catalan.

Transactions can be imported via one of more than 70 exchange and wallet integrations (via API), via wallet addresses and via CSV.

CoinTracking does not only support an abundance of countries and exchanges, but also offers the most advanced reporting capabilities. There is a report for almost everything, and you can export your tax reports directly in TurboTax, TaxACT and Drake.

Yet, this is where the drawbacks start. Sometimes, it's a bit hard to understand what the different reports are all about, how to create a valid report for your country, and what the charts actually mean. Additionally, the helpdesk is often not very actoinable and only provides rather generic advice. It feels a bit as if a tax lawyer wrote the FAQs. Luckily, the support team is very responsive, which means that you can expect a reply to your question within one or two business hours.

As a result, CoinTracking has a comparably steep learning curve to fully understand. Even then, the user interface is still too complicated, and some actions like making changes to transactions will require much more time than with competing crypto tax tools.

Cointracking would easily be our preferred choice, if they were to solve these issues. Until then, it's a great tool for power users who really want to invest time and get the most out of their crypto portfolio tracker, but probably not the best option for less tech-savvy and inexperienced cryptocurrency investors.

Final Verdict

Crypto tax software is no one-size-fits-it-all. In the end, your decision will be dependent on your needs.

For instance, if you are based in markets with a tax-exemption rule after a certain holding period and prefer software that is easy to use, you will be best served with Accointing. If you can't care less about beautiful charts, but want all the power features there is, then CoinTracking is the better choice.

So, before making your decision, define your objectives and check if your exchanges and wallets are supported by the different tax tools. This way, you can make sure that the crypto tax software you select will be the right one for you.