How To File Your Cryptocurrency Taxes with TurboTax

TurboTax officially announced that they are offering support for Bitcoin and cryptocurrency tax reporting. This is great news for cryptocurrency investors and traders as it offers them an easy "do it yourself" way to properly report and file cryptocurrency gains and losses. In order to bring this capability to the TurboTax platform, the Intuit teamed up with CryptoTrader.Tax.

Within TurboTax, the premier, premier-live, self-employed, and self-employed live packages all have the ability to handle cryptocurrency tax reporting in tandem with CryptoTrader.Tax. This is a big deal for consumers who trade and transact with cryptocurrency as the tax reporting process for the digital asset can be challenging.

This article walks through the process of filing your cryptocurrency taxes with the online version of TurboTax. You can also watch the video below which demonstrates the same process.

If you wish to import your data into the desktop version of TurboTax, you can checkout our guide here.

1. Go to TurboTax and select either the premier or self-employed package

After creating your account, you will enter the TurboTax live app. Answer the initial prompts to get started.

2. Select I sold or traded Cryptocurrency

Within the app, you will answer a number of prompts. On one of the early prompts, you will be asked to “get an idea of your financial picture”. Select all that apply to you, and make sure “I sold or traded cryptocurrency” is also selected.

Continue to fill out your tax profile within TurboTax.



3. Navigate to the cryptocurrency section



Once you have filled out the initial prompts, you can jump to the crypto section of TurboTax by navigating to Federal > Wages & Income > Cryptocurrency. This flow is pictured below.

4. Select "Add" cryptocurrency data

Within the cryptocurrency section, you are able to select the Crypto Tax platform that you used to prepare your crypto data.

If you have not built out your cryptocurrency tax report with CryptoTrader.Tax yet, this is where you should pause to create your report. Keep in mind, TurboTax will not congregate your crypto data for you. If you traded on multiple exchanges and had many transactions, you will need to build out your report and crypto tax profile with CryptoTrader.Tax.

CryptoTrader.Tax works by integrating with all major exchanges and cryptocurrency platforms. Simply import all of your historical data into the app. CryptoTrader.Tax will automatically track down proper costs basis and fair market values for every one of your crypto transactions. You can then generate your cryptocurrency tax reports with the click of a button and import this into TurboTax. Learn more about the CryptoTrader.Tax reporting process here.



5. Import your data into TurboTax



Once you have completed your crypto tax report on the CryptoTrader.Tax platform, you can simply import this into TurboTax. Download the TurboTax Online CSV that CryptoTrader.Tax exports with every report package.

Select the TurboTax Online file from the Downloads drop down. Your TurboTax CSV will download into your downloads folder.

After downloading your file, head back over to TurboTax and upload this CSV file.

When prompted, you should “select all” transactions as taxable within the app. CryptoTrader.Tax only exports your taxable transactions, so you don’t need to sift through each one in TurboTax. Simply select all of them.

Once you finish, click 'complete' and you will see a summary of your cryptocurrency transactions within TurboTax.

6. That's it! You have successfully imported your cryptocurrency data into TurboTax

To learn more about how cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are taxed, you can checkout our guide: The Complete 2020 Guide to Cryptocurrency Taxes‍

