So far this year, about 250,000 people have filed their taxes with the IRS, and fewer than 100 of those returns show any gains or losses from investments in cryptocurrency. That’s less than 0.04%.
The striking new numbers come from a study by Credit Karma Tax, a US tax preparation service.
According to Reuters, a company representative at Credit Karma says that “given the popularity of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in 2017, we’d expect more people to be reporting.”
So far, the IRS has not released a comment on the study.
The IRS currently categorizes cryptocurrencies as property. This means each and every trade is considered a sale of property for cash, and money made or lost from every trade must be reported as a capital gains or loss.
A recent large-scale survey of more than 5,000 people showed about six in 10 Americans have heard of Bitcoin. Five percent of those surveyed said they currently own Bitcoin. Assuming all the Bitcoin holders traded in 2017, generating gains or losses, and with a sample size of 250,000 tax filers, roughly 12,500 may need to report their cryptocurrency investments.
Credit Karma says about a million people used their service to file taxes last year, which makes them the fifth largest e-filing service in the US.
