No one likes having to pay taxes – but a platform that recently expanded into Australia aims to make the process as painless as possible for crypto-traders and hodlers.

Accointing began in Switzerland in 2019, but was born out of the 2017 crypto craze, when many new projects launched through initial coin offerings (ICOs), says co-founder and CEO Dennis Wohlfarth.

“All of the complexity really started to come into the space … back then there were single tools out there that kind of had a solution to really bring the data together, but they were not built in a way that was really country-specific and really high quality.”

So Wohlfarth and his four co-founders decided to build their own platform, one that has now grown to 26 people, with plans to hire 10 more soon.

When customers move stocks from one platform to another, typically information needed for tax purposes moves along with it, Wohlfarth notes. But when you transfer crypto from one exchange to another, data like the cost basis isn’t included.

“That’s where we position ourselves, as the middleman to really consolidate everything; we track all those internal transactions internally within your ecosystem, connect them,” Wohlfarth says.

By connecting exchanges to Accointing’s platform, users are also able to get a full overview of how each crypto has performed and how successful (or not) their trades have been, Wohlfarth says.

Specialised for Australia

The company has worked with local accountants in each country to create rules for country-specific reports, he says.

“That’s very important to understand because most of the players don’t do that. In the US, you have a different tax consequence if you get an airdrop and then sell it, compared to Germany. Every country has their own regulations and we have this fully implemented into our tech solutions.”

But the goal isn’t to narc anyone out to the tax authorities, Wohlfarth says.

“We never share any data with any government because we don’t even have specific ID data for users – you can sign up with an anonymous email,” he says.

While the libertarian-minded crypto space has sometimes been known for tax avoidance, Wohlfarth says this is changing.

“In the beginning people just said, ‘why do I need to pay taxes, I’m in crypto because I don’t want to pay taxes’, but there’s a lot of education coming into the market.”

The Australian Tax Office wrote to over 600,000 Aussies recorded as having disposed of cryptocurrencies ahead of filing season this year, reminding them of their obligations.

“We assume that around 30, 35 per cent of crypto holders are known to the government and really at some point will be forced to pay taxes,” Wohlfarth said.

There’s also no charge to connect exchanges to the platform so one’s trades are tracked by it, Wohlfarth says. Generating a tax form is free for those who have only a few trades, while more complex reports cost from $109 to $399.

“That only depends on the transaction amount, so if you have up to 5,000 transactions, you can cover that with the $249 package.”

There’s also a strong support team in the platform’s Telegram channel for users who need help, Wohlfarth says.

The reports can also be useful for presenting to financial institutions, Wohlfarth says.

“If the bank asks where they have this money, like how did they grow $1,000 to $100,000, they can use our consolidated cash flow analysis to prove to the bank where they got it from.

“Which is very important because some of the banks refuse payouts in US dollars, so they can just use our report to prove to the banks ‘hey, this is what I did, here’s a full overview of the transactions, and here’s the full insight into my history’.”

For more details, check out ACCOINTING.com’s website here.

This article was developed in collaboration with ACCOINTING.com, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.

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