Guide How Cosmos taxes actually work
Everything from why a staking reward is taxable the day you get it, to the exact forms you'll hand your accountant.
The 60-second version. The full walkthrough is below.
Rewards are income the day you receive them
The IRS treats a staking reward as ordinary income at fair market value the moment you gain dominion and control over it (Rev. Rul. 2023-14), the same way bank interest works. It doesn't matter whether you ever sell it, swap it, or move it. A validator commission works the same way for the operator. Selling later is a separate event: capital gain or loss against the basis you set on the day you received it.
Cost basis is tracked wallet by wallet
Starting in 2025, the IRS requires wallet-by-wallet cost basis tracking (Rev. Proc. 2024-28), not a single pool averaged across every address you own. If you hold ATOM in three wallets, each one keeps its own lots and its own basis. Cosmos Tax builds every report this way by default, so you don't have to reconstruct it by hand later.
Generating a report, step by step
- 1
Paste one or more addresses and a date range
Any Cosmos Hub address works, delegator or validator. Add more than one if you're scoping a whole entity (see below).
- 2
It syncs in the background
The first pull through a wallet's full history takes real work: every reward, transfer, IBC hop, and fee, priced at the moment it happened. A syncing banner tracks progress so you can read the rest of this guide, or leave the tab entirely, while it finishes.
- 3
Come back and it's already there
Once computed, a report is cached. Reopening the same address is instant. If you've made new transactions since your last visit, hit resync and only the new activity gets pulled in.
- 4
Download the forms you actually need
Not just a CSV: a filled Form 8949, Schedule D, an income report, and a 990-T worksheet if you're staking through a retirement account.
What comes out of a report
Income report
Every staking reward and validator commission, priced in USD at receipt. This is the ordinary income figure for your Schedule 1.
Form 8949 + Schedule D
Every disposal, transfers out, swaps, and Stargaze NFT sales, matched against the wallet-by-wallet basis from the day it was received. Rows with genuinely unknown basis are flagged rather than silently guessed at.
990-T worksheet
For Solo 401(k), IRA, or HSA accounts staking on-chain: unrelated business taxable income (UBTI), the specific deduction, and whether you're over the filing threshold.
Entity statements + evidence bundle
A combined statement across every wallet you've grouped under one entity, plus a bundle of the underlying transactions for when an accountant or auditor wants to see the work.
Exporting into other tax software
Capital gains that span other exchanges or other chains need your whole financial picture, which is exactly what dedicated aggregators are built for. Export straight into Koinly, CoinTracker, CoinLedger, or CryptoTaxCalculator, or use the enterprise formats (Cryptio, Bitwave, a generic all-fields CSV) if you're feeding a larger accounting pipeline. BryanLabs owns the on-chain income side; everything downstream is your existing tools, not a rebuild of them.
Everything here is also an API
Events, balances, the ATOM price series, and the pricing methodology are all public, documented endpoints. Useful if you're a validator embedding a delegator report, or pulling data into your own systems.
Read the API referenceThis is a record for tax preparation, not tax advice. Read the full pricing methodology.