I'm an idiot that fell for an obvious ICO scam. How would I declare that on my taxes?
I'm an idiot that fell for an obvious ICO scam. How would I declare that on my taxes?
Do I declare that I bought the ICO coins on X day and then declare the coins as an immediate sale for 0$ on the same day? Do I have to make some sort of written declaration that the loss was due to a scam?
Posted Jan 29, 2018, 3:30 AM UTC
43
If you got scammed in 2017, you might qualify for a casualty/theft loss as an itemized deduction. If you got scammed in 2018, you're probably out of luck as casualty losses went away under Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Some pros believe you can abandon your position to make it a capital loss. This would be a very aggressive position to take and very risky is the IRS disagrees in terms of penalty and interest.
Thanks a lot for the response.
I fell for it in 2017.
Abandoning the position - does that mean I would declare it as a loss of ETH at the EOY price? Because that does seem very aggressive indeed.
Technically, at the point you were buying whatever ICO coin or spending the ETH to invest, it would be the value of the ETH at the time of the spend.
Sometimes my head hurts figuring this stuff out.
I'm using cointracking.info for keeping it all straight. You can use my link (or not) and get a discount. It's free for your first 250 records. https://cointracking.info?ref=B792248