3 Simple Crypto Tax Hacks The IRS Want You To Ignore

In this video, I am going to walk through three cryptocurrency tax strategies the IRS does not want you to know about. I'm a CPA attorney, bestselling author, and just last month, we filed a client's 2023 tax return and saved them over $500,000 on a tax strategy with their cryptocurrency portfolio. The truth is, you may know nothing about taxes, but that doesn't matter. You may own cryptocurrency. Did you know over 94 million Americans own some form of cryptocurrency? The market cap on cryptocurrency is 1 trillion. And in the last 20, over $28 billion was traded on bitcoin alone. People, these transactions are taxed. The blockchain is public. The IRS is watching. You've got to have strategies that work. And that's exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to walk you through these three strategies. So you better have a pencil and paper handy and buckle up, because we're going to save some freaking taxes. Now, don't worry. We are going to work through each one of these strategies, and I'm going to explain exactly what you need to do to save thousands of dollars with your cryptocurrency portfolio. O so let's jump into it. Strategy number one is the Charitable Remainder Trust. More specifically, the CRUT Charitable Remainder Unit Trust. Now, let me explain when this makes sense. If you bought some cryptocurrency a year ago, five years ago, at some ridiculous low amount, and now it's worth 10x or 20x what you paid for it. What you're sitting on is called a huge capital gain. And capital gains tax is not pretty. Some people think, oh, it's 0% or 15%. No, no, no. It can be in the high 20s, when you start to add in the Affordable Carers act, your state tax, and your ordinary bracket, that can affect your capital gains rate. Now, I know that sounded complex, but your tax rate could be over 30% on the sale of that cryptocurrency, or if you even trade it for another type of cryptocurrency. People, you got to be ahead of the curve on this. Now, that's the capital gain exposure. So what we want to do is not pay capital gains tax and put together a structure where there's no tax at all, but you continue to control that money and get cash flow for the rest of your life. Now, I know that sounds too good to be True, but this CRUD charitable remainder unit trust has been around for over 30 years. It is time tested. It is legit. It's not even a fringe strategy. But I'm going to walk you through it, and I'm going to show you exactly how it works. All right, let's get some facts on the table. Let's say you're sitting on some crypto that is currently worth will put fair market value $1.2 million, and your purchase price, way back when, whenever it was, was $200,000. Accountants, we call that basis. That's what you bought it for. Now, your gain is the fair market value minus the 200. That would be a $1 million capital gain. That's the problem. Now, the capital gain based on your federal and state tax and a multiple of issues could easily be 30%. So you might pay $300,000 in tax. Could you imagine writing a check to the IRS for 300 grand? The cost of a home? Yeah. Not pretty. So what do we do? We're going to try to get rid of this with a crut, a Charitable Remainder Unit Trust. Now, a credit has multiple steps, and it starts with setting up the trust itself. So step one, we're going to set up a trust. Now, you're going to work with an attorney through this process. And I want to also give you the good news. This may only cost between 5 to $8,000, and it's not terribly expensive. Anybody pitching a 10 or $20,000 bill for this, get a second opinion at our office. We're eight grand to do a credit. So you're gonna have an attorney walk you through the whole process. But you gotta understand it because you're the captain of your own ship here. So we're gonna set up the trust that's number one. Now, in this trust, we're going to set up two beneficiaries. We're gonna set up an income beneficiary who is going to be you. So you get to have the income from this trust, and then we are going to have a residual beneficiary. And this means when you die, or 20 years, whichever is longer, we're going to give this money to a charity that's going to be the residual beneficiary. So we're going to put charity down here. All right? So when you set this up, you're going to define that at the beginning. Step two is we're going to donate your crypto. Step two, we're going to donate the crypto to the trust. See, it's a donation. You're donating it to a charitable structure. That's a, that's a donation. Now when you donate that crypto to the cred, you immediately get a tax deduction. So you get a tax deduction for donating your crypto to the trust. Guess who the trustee is? You. You're going to be the investment trustee. You get to direct how that money is going to be invested. So you're going to get a tax deduction. This tax deduction is around 10% of the fair market value. And what did we say our fair market value was going to be? $1.2 million. All right, so you're looking at about $120,000 tax deduction. Boom. And you get to take that over approximately five years. All right, so far, so good. Now once you do this, step four, you're going to sell your crypto. You're going to sell it and guess what? Tax free. Because charities don't pay tax. And since a charity doesn't pay tax, all of the proceeds go back into the trust. No tax. $1.2 million sitting in that bank account. Literally a bank account or it's going to be in a wallet, right? So we're going to have that 1.2 million there. Now, inside this trust is defined a few things is said. Remember, an income beneficiary. So step five is we're going to start distributing every quarter. So every three months we're going to distribute a percentage of whatever the value of this trust is for the rest of your life or 20 years, whichever is longer. If you died 10 years from now, for 10 more years, they're going to give this to your family, whoever you choose. So this distribution every three months is going to be a percentage of that dollar amount. Now that's going to be based on your gender and your age because the IRS has a huge actuarial table. This has been around for years and we're going to figure out what that percentage is. Now for a, let's say a 40 year old male is going to live less than a 40 year old female. So the percentage is going to be greater for a man because he's going to die sooner. So the IRS was like, he's going to die sooner so we can give him some more money. It's not going to have to stick around as long a woman, they're going to get a lesser percentage because she's going to live longer. So we got to make sure there's enough money there. So there's all these tables involved with the irs, but let's just say, I would say the Average is around 10%. A young person in their 30s, it could be as low as 8%, 7%. Someone in their 50s, it could be 12, 13 or 14%. Male or female is going to affect it as well. But when you're working with the lawyer, that's what we figure out. We tell you what those percentages are. So let's say it's 10%. So now for the next. Remember the rest of your life, for 20 years, you're going to get $120,000 every year. Well, I'm going to say in the first year and then 10% of whatever the value is every year thereafter. Now that's going to vary because guess what? You get to continue investing this crap. You could sell and then turn around and reinvest it in real estate. Any passive investment or more crypto. I've had clients sell their crypto in, double it another year from now. You can have 2.4 million sitting in there a year from now. And guess who gets 10% of that? You're you for the rest of your freaking life. Now you did get a tax deduction for making the initial donation. But as you receive this money, you will pay tax because you're getting this distribution. But the beauty is the original sale was tax free. So you've got a bigger pie, you've got a bigger bucket. And that's the strategy here. This is where I said we helped a client just this last year save over 500 grand. They would have paid 500 grand in tax. Or we could put that entire 500 grand in their. Correct, that continues to pay out. That's step five. Now what's here is pretty cool here. At the end of the process, the charity is going to get whatever is left. That's step six. And so the charity at the end of the day is going to want to name a building after you, a wall, a scholarship, whatever. You can even set up your own charity to work with this, which is pretty cool. Now a lot of times the family is like, what the hell? You're going to give all of this money you build up to charity? What the heck? That's what's funny. The family's more upset than the IRS because they're like, where'd all of our go? Oh, I went to this school or this church or whatever. Well, what we can do step seven is we set up, it's called an islet, an irrevocable life insurance trust where we might buy a two million dollar life insurance policy on you that may cost 20 grand a year, maybe life insurance can, you know. 20 grand a year in life insurance. You're like holy shit, I could buy a lot of life insurance. That's right. So we're going to take $20,000 of this and for the next five or six years we're going to open overfund this policy. So you're going to get 100 grand every year, but 20 of it's going to go in life insurance. So at the end of the day when you pass away, the charity gets whatever is left and your family gets $2 million tax free and you get 120 grand or whatever that trust is worth, 10% of it for the rest of your life. You want to know the kicker? Completely asset protected. No lawsuit can touch it. Texting and driving crazy wild living whatever, no one can touch this crut. It's more protected than an LLC or a corporation because they're trying to protect the charity. They can't just go pilfer it because you're an idiot. So this crut is asset protected income for life. No sale on the tax on the sale of your crypto. And the charity gets X amount of dollars and throws a banquet in your honor every year. And your family gets $2 million tax free. That was a pen drop. Yes people, that's just one of many strategies and one of my favorites. So why would we do this? You've got a bill, a big built in gain on crypto that you've owned and now you got to unload it. You want to trade it, you want to sell it, you want to reinvest it. Well great, let's throw it in a crud and keep investing it. And every time you invest it inside the crut. See moving forward, remember you get to continue to invest it. Every time you trade, you never pay tax. This will, will never ever pay tax. The only, only tax you pay is down here when you get your payment every three months for the rest of your frickin life. Pretty cool, right? So that my friends, is strategy number one. Alright, now before we move on to strategy number two, couple questions I often get. Now hold up Mark. I'm going to get just 120 grand every year for the rest of my life. No, no, no, remember you get 10% of whatever the value is of that trust valued January 1st of every year. So again if you doubled the value next year, which would be freaking awesome, and it goes from 1.2 to 2.4 now you get 2,40 grand next year. Oh, next year you didn't do so well. It's down to 1.5 million. Okay, now you get 150 grand that year. So every year it's revalued and you get 10% or whatever the value is. But you get to control how the hell it's invested. This is for the long term hold strategy. For those of you that have held some crypto and there's this built in gain. For those that are day traders and you're constantly trading, I got strategy number two. But for those of you that sat on something, and for some of you, you do you want to do this once a while, you're going to buy some stuff and just sit on it, then we'll harvest it inside a crut down the road. Day trading has its own pros and cons. So keep in mind not every strategy works for every type of crypto trader. Strategy number two is called self directing. It's using your retirement account to do the same trading you've gotten really good at. Another way of saying this, why this would work is if you're so worried about taxes don't even generate taxable income to begin with, then I don't have to figure out how to get rid of the tax. See, if you're trading day trading and buying and selling cryptocurrency or maybe even doing some mining, staking, defi, whatever, you're doing all of that, let's say in a Roth IRA or a Roth 401K. Now anything you do is tax free. It's going to just grow tax free. You're building a tax free atm. Now some of you are like, well Mark, I already have 500 grand in crypto, how am I supposed to get it over to my Roth ira? Well, I got strategies. There's other videos of mine on the backdoor Roth IRA, the Roth 401K. We can start pumping money into this machine and then that machine can trade tax free. Let's talk about how this would work. One principle I teach is called the trifecta. We want to build this picture, this diagram, this, this wealth building machine, the system. And I've got other videos on this as well. And in this example, you might have ordinary income over here in your trifecta and passive income. And down here is your revocable living trust. So you might have a day job, you might have a side Hustle llc, you might have an S corp, la la la la la. But we're over here trading crypto like crazy. And what you're doing is you're generating a taxable transaction, taxable Income every time you trade. And if you say, oh, Mark, I never took the money, I just kept it in my wallet, I just traded Bitcoin for Solana or whatever, that's taxable. The IRS taxes it, even if you just trade it for another type of coin. Big deal. So if you're going to pay tax every time you trade, let's start building this ATM called a Roth. So if I can take some of this money I've been generating over here and contribute it to my Roth, or contribute it to my business, that drops it into my Roth and we add this little 401k piece to it, now I can start building up this year. You can put over 70 grand into a backdoor Roth IRA or more, depending on your age. So what we want to do is start contributing or transferring money into our Roth machine. And these contributions and transfers are not taxable. You're going to pay tax on your money as you make it, but then we're going to contribute the money to this Roth. Now, when you go out and trade and you're doing all of your crypto transactions, there's no tax ever, ever. If you're a sandlot fan that smalls. Okay? So we're trying to pay no tax. This Roth is the key. Now, just in 1999, let me give you a little example. Peter Thiel started his Roth in 1999 with like five grand. It is now worth $4 billion because he traded his Roth. And you say, well, Mark, you can only put five or six grand in a Roth every year. I already told you, you can put up to 50, 60, or 70 grand in a Roth, but whatever you invest invested in can grow exponentially. That's not part of the pass go on Monopoly every year. That contribution is limited, but the gains are unlimited. So the point is, if you can take your crypto transactional profits that you've been building and start to shift your mentality and go, I'm going to peel a little bit of that off and put it over here in this Roth bucket and start to feed this Roth bucket and trade in my Roth bucket. It doesn't happen overnight. This is not a get rich quick scheme. It's a get rich slow scheme. But the beauty is, my crypto traders that have caught onto this three, four, five years ago, they now have a quarter of a million five hundred grand sitting in their Roth ira, which will never pay tax again. Some of the naysayers are like, well, Mark, I'm young and I want to be able to access that money really you can still access your trading money, that's fine. And you may have a day job and some other trades that you're doing in crypto. But could you just trust me? Life comes at you fast. I want to protect this money from a lawsuit. And I want to make sure when you're 50 years old, 60 years old, there's millions sitting there tax free. Go ask your mom and dad, go ask your grandpa and grandma if they've got several million sitting in there tax free, they'll start to cry. For those of you that are in your 30s and 40s, this is your opportunity to build the retirement of your dreams and do it tax free. That is strategy number two. Why we want to do this is to trade without paying taxes and to build a tax free bucket. And it's doable. It's called the Roth IRA or Roth 401K. And how we do it is to start building it, funding it and trading within it. And it's a process. Five, ten years from now you're going to your favorite Christmas card to send out is to me because I just saved you a ton of freaking money. Now another common question I get is Mark, can you just tell me how to get started? Like what, what do you do? You're like making tons of money, you're successful. How do you do this? Well, I was just going to show you here, right here on my phone. Got to be careful how much I show here with you tech guys out there. Now to get this process started, you've got to have just a basic crypto, Roth ira, something that you can actually buy crypto in, not funds, not what Fidelity is going to give you or some BlackRock, this or whatever, some hedge fund. I want to buy real crypto in my IRA and I want to be able to buy a variety of different tokens or currencies. So now Fidelity, Merrill lynch, whatever, they're just going to let you buy into funds that own crypto. I want you to buy the currencies you believe in and the tokens you believe in. That's real crypto trading. So we formed the Directed Trust Company five years ago. This year it'll hit $2 billion in clients that have self directed their own money. Fastest growing 5 star rated company in the self directed industry. Check it out at Direct Calm. I'm in the board of directors. The team is amazing over there. Now what we did was we formed a partnership with a platform many of you know of. Gemini and Gemini married together. Together we got married. And now you can have a Roth IRA to trade crypto. So in the next 30 minutes or less, you could go to directed ira.com and say, I'm going to open up a crypto Roth. Your fee to open the Roth account might be around 3 to 400 bucks. There's always specials and discount codes and all that. 3 or 400 bucks. Boom, you're going to open your crypto Roth. Then you're going to fund it. And this year, if you're under age 50, you could put 7,000 in. If you're 50 year old, you can put 8,000 in. So, boom, you're going to put in 7,000. You take some of those profits you're already paying tax on and start shifting them. You're going to contribute them from your bank account with an ACH or whatever and you're going to put in your $7,000. Now, that process might take a day or two to get the seven grand in the account. And then you're going to have your Gemini app, which I'm holding up here. This is my little Gemini app. And I'm right now looking at my portfolio of cryptocurrency right now. I'm not going to show it to you. I got my keys, I got to be careful. And I can just go right in here and I can start trading. And I'm looking at my bitcoin, I'm looking at my portfolio and view portfolio. It's not doing too bad today. I've got some soul. I love soul. Right now. I'm a huge soul fan and I've got. I know some of you are going to laugh. I'm not even going to tell you the ones I bought because I, I have some dark horses that I'll buy too. But anyway, I love Polygon, I love soul. And we actually have a dog that's a Shiba Inu, so I had to buy some Shiba. But anyway, the point is you can buy 100 different types of tokens. And I know some of you want to get off, you know, in a crazy different type of defi wallet or a little, you know, something a little more aggressive, a token that may not be on Gemini. And you don't want to be on a platform like Gemini. Oh, we got strategies for you. We can set up an LLC owned by your Roth and you can go wherever the hell you want to buy what you want. NFTs. But this platform is so simple. Set up your account. Gemini sends you the onboarding with the app. Your Roth IRA is now in an app where you can actively Start trading your crypto within minutes. That's what I do. And what you can do is start transferring over money from an old 401k, an old job. You can transfer over money from an IRA that you may already have. You can put in your contribution for this year. If you have a small business, we might create a solo 401k crypto. And now we're putting away 30, $40,000 or more. See, remember the steps we got to create the structure and then start funding it and transferring into it and then start trading. And it's that easy on an app, right here on your phone. That's what I do. And I have fun with it. I go to dinner with my kids. I'm like, hey, what are you, what are you trading right now? What's going on? And it's a lot of fun. And we have fun as a family now. For many of you, it's a serious deal. And that protection, the authentication, the structure is monitored by the sec. And we have been so, so careful to make sure it's legit and you're protected if you want to invest your money in crypto. So that's the strategy, and it can be very simple to get started, and you're off to the races. Now, strategy number three relates to another type of cryptocurrency investor. And this could be you remember we talked about the buy and hold strategy and we talked about the trading strategy. But how many of you might be doing some crypto mining, staking some defi lending? How many of you are doing some strategies inside the metaverse? How many of you are creating NFTs, collectibles and utility NFTs? And then let's even put another layer on this. How many of you are gamers that are earning tokens or crypto inside the games you might play? People, all of that industry, all of those transactions are taxable. You're making money. I don't care if you're a landscaper mowing lawns or you've got a donut shop and selling donuts on it every morning, or you're doing crypto mining or staking, they're a business, the IRS is going to tax it. Little spoiler alert here. Do you know what the number one question is on the tax form this year? And it's been this way for the last three years. The number one question on your 1040 tax return, you put in your name, your social and your filing status. First question, did you buy, sell, trade, any sort of cryptocurrency in the last Year, yes or no? Under penalties of perjury, Go to jail, yes or no? Now, with 94 million Americans and growing that own some sort of cryptocurrency, that question scares the living daylights out of them. Because if they lie, it's not pretty. The IRS doesn't like liars, cheaters, not good. So accountants. I'm training accountants around the country. I'm holding crypto tax summits, training them on how to help you to report your taxable transactions in crypto. And what you need to know is which you love, the blockchain is public. No Big Brother, no Deep State, no one's trying to control your money because it's public, right? Well, guess who can see it too? The freaking irs. I mean, you can't have your cake and eat it too. And you think, oh, well, the IRS isn't going to tax it. What are you smoking? They have been out there. Joe Biden allocated $80 billion to the IRS to go after this. They have task force, force built to look at the blockchain. So does it mean the sky's falling and bitcoin is bad and crypto's bad? No. It just means if you're an American, you want to live in this country and you're going to buy crypto or stock or start a business or make money, you're going to pay some tax or you got to learn some strategy. That's where I come in. I love giving you strategy. So you see the point here. If you're generating crypto, if you're making money in crypto, if people are paying you in crypto, I've got kids that are gaming, making crypto, and getting a 1099 from video games. That's taxable. So strategy number three is treat your crypto activities, your crypto activities, like a business. That's it. Wake up and smell the coffee. I can save you thousands and thousands of dollars in taxes, create tax deductions, and structure you as a corporation. Now you're making money in your crypto activities as a corporation. Could be an LLC taxed as an S corporation, or right out of the gate is an Inc. And when you do that, you're now coming out into the dark. You are now saving taxes and treating yourself like a legit business. Protecting yourself from an audit, paying the taxes you're supposed to pay, and saving taxes you'd never even realized we're going to hit you and blindside you. So let's go to the trifecta. Let me show you what it looks like. Remember the trifecta, three pieces. You've got your trust down here and your 1040 tax return. And over here you've got your LLC and you're buying rental properties. Or you have crypto over here and you're trading. Oh, and you've got your IRA. Remember your Roth, your 401k. We already talked about that, that's cool. That's over here. And you're going to be doing trading over here. What's the other part of the trifecta? Your operations. So for those of you that have operations in crypto, that's what I'm talking about. We want to set you up as an llc and more than likely you're going to get taxed as an S corp, which is freaking awesome. And all of that mining and different types of staking and earning in crypto, NFT creation, digital assets, Metaverse activity, all of these little activities where you're making money. With crypto, you're not trading. We're not talking about trading, you're earning crypto. When you earn cryptocurrency, it's subject to self employment tax, 15.3% right off the top. Then Fed, then State, you want to add that up, that could be as high as 50% you're going to pay in taxes. Now, if I can funnel it through an S corp, set up a W2, we're going to fund your 401k, we're going to take write offs for home, office and to auto and travel and electronics and computers and laptops and cameras and all these goodies. Now you're taking tax write offs against the crypto you're earning. Now you want to know how simple this is? It's just owning it. It's waking up and realizing that you're in business. And we're going to set up an entity for you. I would want you to get a consultation with one of my tax lawyers, meet with a professional. Doesn't have to be my team, but we freaking know what we're doing. I've got cryptocurrency tax lawyers, they know what they're doing. Your total cost to set up a new entity might be 1200 bucks. By the way, we take crypto, so 1200 bucks, you get a new entity, you get your questions answered, you get a structure and you start to understand, oh, I'm going to have an LLC over here for trading and an S corp over here for earning. It's all going to flow down into my 1040. Oh, I'm going to fund a Roth IRA. I'm going to fund a 401k, people. Do you have a. I have a ultimate guide on tax strategies of 30 different strategies. I'm sharing three today, people. You captain your ship, you've got to start learning some of this. So you're like, this is boring or as complex. You know, the number one cost in your life is not a house payment. It's not food, it's not auto, it's taxes. The number one cost in your life is going to be paying taxes. Do you want to talk about it? You want to deal with it? Because I'll make it easy to learn, I'll make it simple. And I'm telling you exactly what to do here. If you've got built in gains, you look at the CRT Charitable Remainder Trust. If you want to trade, let's start building a tax free trading account called a Roth. And if you're earning crypto, let's get you incorporated. Let's get you an LLC and an S corp and start treating it like a business. It's simple to do. And you're going to start becoming a business owner. It's going to build your credit, it's going to save you from an audit. It's going to make you money and wealth more than you can imagine and save you taxes over and over again. So now you can take your profits, go buy real estate, go diversify and build real wealth. Now, as I come to my conclusion here, I want to talk to you w2 wage earners. I know it sucks looking at that paycheck. Sometimes you look at the stub and you're like, what the 40% gone, state withholding, federal withholding, FICA crap on there we don't even recognize right now. I want to be clear with you. These strategies are not built to save taxes on your W2. You had a day job, you want to make some money. You want to get your match in your 401k and kick ass, go do it. These strategies are about this side hustle, this investment piece of your life. And you need both to be successful. I love to marry the W2. And the investment strategy, the business strategy. Now, there are two different mentalities, There are two different approaches. And the pain that you're getting on your paycheck with that W2, we can help alleviate it by creating income with a much lower tax bracket or maybe no tax at all. And we can start creating tax deductions for this other type of income that you're not able to take with the W2. So we want to we just want both worlds to come together and it's super powerful. So there's a place for you you w2a turners. This is awesome. Let's open up this whole new world. Just come and see. That's from Aladdin. If you don't Magic carpet, right? I won't sing anymore. But there's an opportunity here and you can do it. You can bring both together and learning takes away fear and taking just small steps in action can open up the universe where just it starts to come together in weird ways. So I want to challenge you, take some action here. Continue to learn. I've got additional videos down below that you can you can start clicking right now to continue on your path to saving thousands of dollars in taxes and building more wealth, asset protected and living your American Dream. You now know the exact strategies you need to implement immediately to reduce the taxes on your crypto portfolio. You can go and implement these strategies in your own life and begin to save thousands of dollars in taxes. However, I'm sure like many others, you have a lot of questions around exactly how to implement these strategies in your particular situation. If you need a professional to clarify the details outlined in this video or need specific tax help, please click in the description down below. It will take you to a page where you can schedule a consultation with a member of our team where we can begin to work together and take control of your taxes. See you in the next video.