Just a few days ago Uphold, the required wallet to receive the earned rewards from the Brave Browser BAT, sent me an email letting me know my tax documents were ready. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I got this email as it was definitely not something I expected from Uphold. I have a massive love/hate relationship with Uphold as I like how they offer different things like precious metals and when exchanging BAT for other cryptos the conversion is not the worst in the world they do have killer fees in just about everything else. It is rare to find someone who actually likes Uphold due to the fees and the fact Brave forces you to use them.
These tax documents though were key to get! Both Coinbase and Uphold follow US regulations and have users sign a KYC or Know Your Customer and with this, they report crypto activity of yours to the government. This last year was really my first immersing myself in the crypto world so taxes were the last thing on my mind until I had already done a ton of activity. Uphold's crazy fees though went to some good use with the tax document though! They issued a 1099-MISC which is a nice cheat sheet to have to help calculate my taxes owed or not owed with deductions that I am eligible to take!
Coinbase though the exchange ruler of the United States though really failed in this regard. For them to issue a 1099 they required an assortment of criteria. Some of these were really basic like being a Coinbase customer and living in the United States. Others though to a new person to the crypto game were rather high for no apparent reason. You had to EARNED $600 or more in rewards or fees from Coinbase Earn, USDC rewards, and/or staking. As someone who was really just entering EARNING $600 was a tall task to ask. If it was spending $600 that would have made a lot more sense however I was one who used DeFi's to stake and earn much higher rewards. Because of that, I did not qualify so instead I have had to download my transaction history for the year.
This is not the end of the world but this is a huge inconvenience. With already having to adjust to a new city and work among other tasks now I have to learn how the government wants all of these crypto things reported so that I can compile it and send it into a tax advisor to get it checked over. For a company like Coinbase who is making a ton of money and is gearing up to go public on the US markets, it is just silly to irritate your base with this. Coinbase could easily produce 1099's with how big of a company they are but instead, they just screw over the little guys and that is a horrible business plan.
