Why you can trust this guide

There is no one clear rule that says how every single one of your cryptocurrency transactions should be taxed. Instead, the IRS periodically releases guidelines to help you understand your obligations.

Our Head of Tax, Nick Waytula, reviewed these guidelines alongside our expert writing team to help produce this comprehensive guide to crypto gas fees.

2025-02-28

How Investing vs Trading impacts tax

In most cases of buying and selling cryptocurrency as a retail investor, you are participating in investing rather than trading. The two are treated differently for tax purposes.

  • Investing is subject to capital gains tax or income tax, depending on the nature of the transaction.
  • Trading in this case refers to self-employment which is subject to income tax and National Insurance Contributions.

The key difference between investing and trading – along with the different tax treatments, is how losses generated in the crypto-activity can be used.

In their guidance, HMRC have explicitly stated that they would expect it to be exceedingly rare that any crypto-activity constituting buying & selling crypto would be classified as “trading”.

If you are uncertain, speak to a tax advisor as there are always exceptions, including but not limited to, developing tokens and large scale mining.

How is crypto tax calculated in the United States?

You can be liable for both capital gains and income tax depending on the type of cryptocurrency transaction, and your individual circumstances. For example, you might need to pay capital gains on profits from buying and selling cryptocurrency, or pay income tax on interest earned when holding crypto.

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How to calculate tax on ETH gas fees

Key takeaways
This tax guide is regularly updated: Last Update  
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At the time of writing gas price is 180 Wei and to do a trade on Uniswap cost around $100 in ETH. This is a significant amount for most users, and adding this to your cost basis is an important part in minimizing your taxes. But in most circumstances you will also need to consider the capital gains realized on the ETH you are spending for gas.

Example:

Date Trade Currency Price Quantity Gas (ETH) ETH Price
1st Jan 2017 Buy ETH 30 2 - -
4th Oct 2020 Buy SUSHI 200 1 - -
6th Feb 2020 Sell SUSHI 1000 1 0.1 1000
6th Feb 2020 Buy DAI 1000 1 - -

In the above example Satoshi sells $1,000 worth of SUSHI on Uniswap for DAI. To do this he pays $100 in gas using ETH. He originally bought his Sushi for $200, and his ETH for $30 each. Satoshi realized a profit of $800 by selling his sushi (1000 - 200), but he also had $100 worth of gas fees, so he overall realized gain is $700 (1000 - 200 - 100). However he originally bought ETH at $30, and at the time of the transaction ETH was worth $1000, so Satoshi needs to consider the gain in ETH. This would be calculated as $97 ((1000 - 30) * 0.1). As you can see there is a lot going on here.

Fortunately Crypto Tax Calculator is one of the few crypto tax software offerings to carefully consider this scenario. All you need to do is import your Ethereum public wallet address into our app, and we will automatically categorise all these transactions and handle this calculations for you. All you need to do is sanity check the results and you are sorted.

Guida Fiscale Italiana
Non sei sicuro dei tuoi obblighi fiscali sulle criptovalute? Questa guida completa ti aiuterà a comprendere e presentare il tuo portafoglio di criptovalute in Italia.
Guida Fiscale alla DeFi
Ti sei dilettato con la DeFi? Questa guida approfondita analizza i dettagli delle tasse DeFi in modo che tu possa presentare la richiesta in tutta sicurezza.
Guida Fiscale NFT
Hai provato a fare trading di NFT? Questa guida completa analizza i dettagli delle tasse NFT in Italia, così puoi presentare la dichiarazione con sicurezza.
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