I talked to the Dutch taxes agency today about my earnings from blogging on Hive.
Spoke to three nice ladies and about 70 minutes later... I'm still not completely sure how to handle this.
The most important thing is: It's all a bit of a grey area, this whole earning something with your hobby thing. Especially when the earnings are neither very high, nor incredibly low. Although overall value isn't the main concern here and I think more likely than not, I should declare my blogging earnings as income.
There is one thing I'm certain of: Every first day of january, I have to write down the value of all of my cryptocurrencies in Euro's, so that I can declare those as my possessions. They, together with our savings and bank accounts (and stocks, if we would have those), will all be counted together and if above €100.000,- (the amount for a couple this year), we'll have to pay taxes over the amount above that. I'm pretty certain that won't be the case, even if Bitcoin does keep on climbing up. It will have to go pretty faaaaar up!
Anyway, that's the thing I'm certain of, but that's what I've been doing every single year, ever since I started blogging here. So I already knew that.
Then, onto the earnings part. Now that crypto's are worth more and my followers and votes are way more than when I started out, I decided to keep track of my earnings. Every time I claim my rewards, I note down their value in Euro's at that particular moment in time (which is a real drag, so I only do this once or twice a month now). The results are far from any kind of part-time job payment, but they also aren't nothing. Besides, with my crappy burnout situation, I might want to get more active and hopefully earn a little more and not have to work for a while (if only!).
So, I wanted to know if/how I should declare these earnings when doing my taxes. You know, so that when I pay out in Euro's to my bank account, I'll have proof I'm doing everything by the book and won't be accused of money laundering (Aaah, the awesome reputation of crypto...).
I called, my call got transferred twice and I got put on hold a lot. Eventually, it came down to this: I need to decide for myself if my blogging gains are seen as income. This is based on a few things: whether or not I am participating in economical traffic, if I am expecting a benefit from my actions, if I am expecting an advantage from my actions and if I'm doing these actions outside of my own social circle.
When in doubt, I can write down all of the information about my earnings and send a letter to my local tax office to judge the entire thing for me.
I also asked about how to deal with Hive Power if I do decide that my blogging earnings should be seen as income. Hive and HBD is quite simple to me: Once I claim rewards, I own them and am immediately able to trade them for other currencies. Therefor, I'll write down their value in Euro's as soon as I claim rewards and declare them for that year. Hive Power, however, is stuck to my account and I can't do anything with it until I power down, which takes quite a few weeks.
The nice lady put me on hold again for quite some time and later told me she was discussing this with a co-worker. She then told me that, again, I have to decide for myself how to handle this, but once I decide, I need to stick to that decision. So with HP not being available for instant trading, I think I will declare that as income if/when I power down (which I've never done yet). I will write down its value in Euro's on the day I receive my powered down Hive and declare it as income for that year.
With that in mind, my Hive income this year is basically just a couple of hundred Euro's. Not really note-worthy, but if I do manage to increase that next year and/or the overall value of HBD/Hive increases... Or if my bank wants to know if I'm doing everything by the book... (which apparently, they are pretty strict about when it comes to feeding your bank account from a crypto exchange).
I'll need some time to let this stuff sink in. Sleep on it and probably also get into contact with my bank about all of this stuff. Because I do want to be able to enjoy my earnings (from trading aswell), but I don't want any trouble with the bank and their strict money laundering policies!
Bah, I'm sure most people don't even think about this stuff, but I just don't want to get into trouble.
How do YOU handle your crypto-related taxes?
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