The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) clearly made a point when it made Coinbase hand over data from 13,000 of its users who bought Bitcoin between 2013 and 2015 and potentially evaded taxes during the process. These mean huge capital gains for the people involved, as Bitcoin went for as low as 200 USD during that era. Coinbase refused the IRS at first, but a court in San Francisco ruled in favor of the inquiry.

This was clearly not something the users are happy with, but the situation seems unavoidable with an exchange that is registered in the US. Now the exchange, to favor users in regards of doing taxes, announced in a blog post that a new calculating tool is added to the site, which helps to generate a report based on capital gains or losses that a user has achieved. The method the calculator uses is ‘FIFO’ (first-in-first-out, which is a cost flow assumption, where the first goods purchased are also the first goods sold).

The calculator is mainly tailored for the people that use Coinbase exclusively. For ICO participants and users that trade on other platforms this is not a suitable solution according to the blog. It is also clearly stated that the tool provides a preliminary gain/loss calculation to assist customers, but bear in mind that it cannot be used as an official tax documentation. Results must be validated with an accountant before filing it for the IRS.