If you ask people in the crypto world which crypto tax site they recommend, most will say Bitcoin.Tax or CoinTracking.Info. However, are those really the best ones to use? How does my personal choice, TokenTax, stack up against them? In this article, we’ll be taking an in-depth look at all 3 options – full of screenshots, numbers, and other information!

Before going any further, I just want to disclose that I am partnered with TokenTax to help them gain exposure this tax season. However, I used them last year without any affiliation, and was so happy with their software and service that I was the one who reached out to them for a partnership this year. Furthermore, all of my points will be backed up by pertinent data and screenshots and proof, so I hope to come off as fair in this article.

Please note: All points are valid at time of publication. Product and features may have changed since publication.

Bitcoin.Tax review & pain points

Bitcoin.Tax has the most name-recognition out of all crypto tax sites, most likely because it is the oldest one in the market. However, after trying it out, there is a lot left to desire.

First of all, their user interface looks super old school, like they haven’t updated it since the very beginning. Here is what one of their pages currently looks like:

The process of using Bitcoin.Tax requires reading a lot text instructions and a lot of manual actions. It definitely isn’t for the beginner investors who want as close to a plug-and-play solution as possible. Specifically for me, I wish that we could just combine the Income and Spending tabs into 1 section. For other crypto tax sites, I could input just 1 CSV for this section, but for Bitcoin.Tax they force us to split it into 2, which was inconvenient.

Finally, Bitcoin.Tax’s customer support is slow and hard to find. If you go to their support page, their Contact Us button is at the very bottom and clicking it brings up a Zendesk form in which you have to fill out and wait patiently for their team to respond (if at all).

They even write a disclaimer to send another support request or email them directly if you haven’t heard back in a few days. This is definitely not for those who have a lot of questions and need help figuring out how to use their software or just have other crypto tax questions in general. Bitcoin.Tax is a “pay and figure it out yourself” type of crypto tax site.

CoinTracking.Info review & pain points

CoinTracking is another well known tracking and reporting solution in the crypto world. However, as with Bitcoin.Tax, I tried it out and found several pain points.

First and foremost, there are just way too many options and buttons to click. On the Home Page (screenshot below), there are so many different tabs and options within those tabs. It definitely took me a good while to figure out where and how to start.

CoinTracking definitely feels like it was over-engineered and built by techies for techies. Just look at their complicated form that appears when you try to generate a Tax Report. It takes a while to look through all the options and question which selection is right for your scenario.

Second, as an American user, I immediately noticed that this site was built by Europeans and hence had a noticeable European tilt by default. Two things in particular that caused friction for me:

The default currency is Euros, so when I input data to try it out, everything showed up in Euros initially which confused me. Commas are read differently by their system. So when you put $1,000, they’ll read that in as $1. This was super confusing for me initially when their report results came out VASTLY different than other sites. You’ll need to go into your manual import CSV files (if you have any) and change those to be without commas.

Third, the user experience also has a lot of friction. For example, when you make any changes to your data, they don’t auto-calculate your results for you, you need to actually press a “Recalculate Trades” button or else your data won’t be changed. This is super confusing and should be done for us automatically.

Also, when I was trying out the custom CSV import function, I followed their instructions exactly but their system still didn’t read it properly, so I had to message their support for help…which brings me to my final point.

Like Bitcoin.Tax, CoinTracking uses an old school support ticket system. This means that it could be days before you are helped, and that is indeed what I’ve experienced when trying to get my questions answered (my ticket took 24 hours). Granted, we are in the midst of tax season so they probably are super busy, but as a customer I value customer support immensely and that should be priced into the cost of the software, in my opinion.

TokenTax review – why they stand out

Now what makes TokenTax stand apart from the other 2 popular crypto tax options? First, it has to be their ease of use. Their platform is extremely beginner friendly in my opinion. Just take a look at their dashboard – it is very clean and easy to understand what’s going on. There aren’t too many buttons and blobs of text which may be distracting for first time users.

Another thing that TokenTax excels at is their clean and standardized instructions for connecting to various exchanges and wallets. After you successfully connect an exchange or wallet, you should be able to integrate your other ones easily.

Now a big limitation for all of these crypto tax sites is that they’re only as accurate as your data is. If you forget a wallet or a straggler transaction that was outside of your typical exchanges/wallets, then the tax software is going to give inaccurate results. This can be a big problem because depending on the accounting method you choose, 1 wrong/missing transaction early on could cause a big ripple effect down through your entire trade/transaction history. This is where a helpful and available support team makes ALL the difference.

Last year when I using their software for the first time, my initial results had all sorts of errors in it. I was sure that it was their software’s fault but then after digging into my records and emails, I realized I forgot to input an additional peer-2-peer Bitcoin transaction. After I added that, everything matched up perfectly and gave me way more confidence that the results were right.

Through the whole time, they answered my questions promptly and were patient with me, explaining what were the possible causes for various mistakes in my data. I really love their pop-up support chat. Their team may be busy but they do usually get back to you within a few hours if not a few minutes. This stands head and shoulders above Bitcoin.Tax and CoinTracking, whose support processes are impersonal and keep you waiting long periods of time when you just want to get your crypto taxes figured out ASAP.

Conclusion

If you’ve only tried Bitcoin.Tax or CoinTracking before, OR this is your first time picking a crypto tax software, I urge you to check out TokenTax. I am a happy repeat customer and will use them as long as I have crypto trades to report. If you have any questions, definitely ask them in their Telegram group and just check out their website for more info.