rjs
Level 15
Level 15

Get your taxes done using TurboTax

It will not double your income. The amount of income from the investment sale is the gain (profit), not the proceeds (the amount you received from the sale). Since you sold it almost immediately, your gain will be zero or very close to zero, as I said earlier. So yes, it adds both transactions to your income, but for the second transaction it is adding zero.


Your gain on the sale is the proceeds shown on the 1099-B, minus your basis. The proceeds is the dollar amount that you received for the crypto. Your basis is probably not shown on the 1099-B. It's the value of the crypto when you received it, which is the amount that you report as business income. Since you sold it right away, the value probably changed very little from when you received the crypto until you sold it, so you will have a very small gain or loss, possibly zero.


You have to report the sale on your tax return, because the IRS gets a copy of the 1099-B. If it's not on your tax return you will get a notice from the IRS, with a bill for additional tax. They don't know your basis, so they will assume that your basis (not the gain) is zero. A zero basis would make the entire amount that you received taxable profit, and they will tell you to pay tax on that amount. The result is that NOT reporting the sale will double your income, as far as the IRS is concerned. The way to avoid having the income doubled is to report the two transactions, as I suggested.