TurboTax Online Crypto Tax Filing Guide 2023 🇺🇸

Getting Started

If this is the first time you are using TurboTax Online, you will need to spend some time entering your personal information. As you move onto entering your crypto income, navigate to the “Investments and Savings” section, and select “Stocks, Cryptocurrency, Mutual Funds, Bonds, Other (1099-B)”. The first time you visit this section, you will be asked some questions about your crypto assets, be sure to answer these questions based on your individual situation.

Reporting your Gains

Gains Summarized

The easiest way to report your cryptocurrency gains and losses is to summarize your gains into short and long term. This will save you a lot of time, but you will need to send an attachment with detailed information.

1. In the income section, navigate to the “Investments and Savings” section, expand the drop-down and select “Stocks, Cryptocurrency, Mutual Funds, Bonds, Other (1099-B)”.
2. The following screen will ask you whether you had investment income in 2022, such as crypto sales, answer “Yes”.
3. Click through the next screen until you reach a screen prompting you to import your tax info, select “Enter a different way”.
4. In order to be able to upload our attachment for electronic filing (and avoid mailing Form 8453), select “Stocks, Bonds, Mutual Funds”.
5. The next screen will ask you for information on the brokerage that sent the 1099-B, you can use “Accointing” for this name. Leave the account number and EIN blank.
6. The next screen will ask questions about your 1099-B (in this case our tax report). The question on employee stock will be “No” as will be the question asking if these sales include other types of investments (while your trades may include coins, tokens and NFTs, these are all considered digital assets). You can answer the question on whether you bought every investment listed as yes, as anything received another way would be handled correctly through Accointing.
7. On the next screen, select “Sales section totals”and continue through this screen and the following.
8. Enter your crypto gains.  Select “Short-term did not receive 1099-B form” or “Long-term did not receive 1099-B form” depending on whether you are reporting your short or long-term gains.  If you did receive a 1099-B, select the option as indicated on your 1099-B and make sure to read our Crypto Forms 1099 article.  Enter your proceeds as well as your cost basis making sure to enter the right amounts. Page 1 of your accointing tax report will provide you with these numbers.
9. After clicking through the last step, you will see a summary screen showing your gains so far. If you need to add more sales, such as your long-term sales, select “Add more sales” and repeat the steps above for your long-term sales. Short-term gains are taxed differently than long-term gains, therefore you must always report them separately and remember to send in your attachment. Once you have entered all your crypto gains, click “Continue”.
10. You will now be prompted to upload your pdf copy of your 1099-B attachment. You can simply drag and drop your pdf attachment into this screen – be sure to have it ready. If you skip this step, you will have to mail in your information separately.
11. The final screens will give you information about your overall taxable gain or loss from your investments.

For additional information on generating and filing your attachment to form 8949, check out our Crypto Gains – Attachments to your 8949 guide.

Importing Your Detail

If you do not wish to send in your details and would rather import your data directly into TurboTax, accointing provides you with a file that you can easily import. If you do not see this file in your tax reports, re-download your reports by selecting “I file using an online tool” and you should see a “TurboTax Online” csv file. Follow the steps below:

1. In the income section, navigate to the “Investments and Savings” section, expand the drop-down and select “Stocks, Cryptocurrency, Mutual Funds, Bonds, Other (1099-B)”.
2. The following screen will ask you whether you had investment income in 2022, such as crypto sales, answer “Yes”.
3. Click through the next screen until you reach a screen prompting you to import your tax info, select “Enter a different way”.
4. Select “Cryptocurrency” on the following screen.
5. Now select “Upload it from my computer” when prompted to select your crypto experience.
6. On the next screen, click on the drop down menu and select “Other (Gain/Loss)”.
7. Upload your accointing TurboTax Online csv file. TurboTax lets you upload up to 4,000 crypto sales. If you have more sales, we recommend summarizing your gains as instructed above. TurboTax will automatically enter all the data from your file and you will be returned to a summary screen prompting you to review your data.
8. Select “Review”, click through the next screen and then you will be taken to a screen that allows you to review 200 transactions at a time. You should make sure that the data got uploaded correctly – you can do this by following your trades with your Form 8949 short and long-term csv files provided in the tax reports. Make sure to pay special attention to any transactions that TurboTax labels “NEEDS REVIEW”. You can review and edit the information of any transaction by clicking on the pencil and entering the correct information.
9. Once all your data looks correct, click “Continue”. Your total imported gain or loss should agree to your accointing tax report page 1.

Reporting Your Crypto Income 

We now have to enter any other taxable crypto income such as mining, staking, airdrops or hard forks. Keep in mind that if your income is from a trade or business, such as a Bitcoin mining operation, you will need to report as such. For everyone else, how you report this income will depend on whether you:

Received a 1099-MISC

1. In the income section, navigate to the “Other Common Income” section, expand the drop-down and select “Form 1099-MISC”.
2. Navigate to “Other Common Income” section
3. Click on “Start” next to Form 1099-MISC
4. The next screen will ask if you got a 1099-MISC, click “Yes”. If your 1099-MISC is due to self-employment income, you should enter that under the “Self-Employment” income section. Any 1099-MISC from an exchange for staking or earning rewards, will not be from self-employment. 
5. On the next screen, enter the name of the payer, the payer’s federal ID number, as well as any amounts reported in boxes 1-18. If you received this for crypto earned on an exchange, likely only box 3 will be populated.
6. The next screen will ask for the reason why you got the 1099-MISC, enter a short description such as “staking” or “crypto rewards” then click “Continue”.
7. The next screen will ask specific questions about the Form 1099-MISC.  Read through them but most likely none will apply unless you have a special situation.  Click on “None of these apply” then click “Continue”.
8. The next screen will ask if this was related to work that’s “like your main job” – unless this 1099-MISC was issued to you due to providing services to a company as a contractor (in which case you would generally receive a Form 1099-NEC), then select “No, it didn’t involve work like my main job” then select “Continue”.
9. The next screen will ask how often you have received this type of income, you can keep “I got it in 2022” selected and click “Continue”.
10. The next screen will ask if your crypto rewards involve an intent to earn money.  If you click on the examples, you will see that “an intent to earn money”  means that  “You had an intent to earn money if you signed up for a job to make money.” While this is very vague, this question is asking whether your 1099-MISC income originated from a trade or business with the intent of making profit.  You should generally select “No, it didn’t involve an intent to earn money” as  most 1099-MISC forms you receive for crypto income will not be due to providing services as a business.  Click “Continue”.
11. If you received other 1099-MISC forms, select “Yes” and repeat the process, otherwise select “No” and click  “Continue”.

Did not receive a 1099-MISC

1. In the income section, navigate to the “Less Common Income” section, expand the drop-down and select “Miscellaneous Income, 1099-A, 1099-C”.
2. On the following screen, select “Other reportable income”. Click “Yes” on the following screen.
3. On the next screen, enter a description of the income and the amount, and click “Continue”.  If you did not receive any 1099-MISC forms for crypto income, you can report the total of your taxable income per your accointing tax report as “Various Crypto Income” then enter the total amount.  If you received a 1099-MISC for some of your crypto income, follow the 1099-MISC instructions above and be careful to not double report this income as it will also be on your accointing tax report. Refer to our Crypto Forms 1099 article for more information on 1099s.

Capital Loss Carryovers

If you filed with TurboTax Online in the prior year, any capital loss carryovers should be automatically rolled over into this year. However, it is a good idea to verify that these amounts are correct as they impact your current year tax return. If this is your first time using TurboTax Online, you will need to enter this information regardless.

1. In the income section, navigate to the “Investments and Savings” section, expand the drop-down and select “Capital Loss Carryover”.
2. Click “Edit” on the top right and enter your 2021 information from your prior year Form 1040. You will need to enter:
3. Click on “Continue” and if you have already entered your capital gains or losses for 2022, TurboTax will summarize how your carryover can be used this year, and what you can carry forward to 2023.
4. Form 1040 line 15 – Taxable income
5. Schedule D line 7 – Net short-term capital gain or (loss)
6. Schedule D line 15 – Net long-term capital gain or (loss)
7. Schedule D line 21 – Allowable loss
8. Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) differences for carryovers
9. Form 6251 line 4 – Alternative minimum taxable income

For additional information on filing your crypto taxes, including 1099 questions, extending your tax return and attachments, check out our Crypto Tax Filing Guide 2023.

The information contained in this guide, including any supplemental materials, is for general information purposes and does not constitute financial, investment, legal or tax advice. The present content is not intended as a thorough, in-depth analysis, nor a substitute for a formal opinion, nor is it sufficient to avoid tax-related penalties. Please consult your tax advisor.