What are the tax liabilities or impact for selling gold?
Gold is classified as a collectible so the gain rates are as follows: So you'd report a gain of $100 or $1,000 , depending on which coin you sold. For reporting purposes, I would treat the purchase and sale of gold like a purchase and sale of a stock. The place to do so is Schedule D. (And if it's the wrong form, but you reported it, there is might not be a penalty, whereas there is a penalty for NOT reporting.) The long term gain would be at capital gains rates. The short term gain would be at ordinary income rates. And if you have two coins bought at two different times, you get to choose which one to report (as long as you report the OTHER one when you sell the second coin).
"I doubt it. In the States you would only owe tax if you sold such an item at a profit. ""garage sales"" aren't taxable as they are nearly always common household items and sale is  more about clearing out one's attic/garage than about profit. Keep in mind, if I pay for a book, and immediately sell it for the same price, there's no tax due, why would tax be due if I sell for a loss?" Unless your investments are held within a special tax-free account, then every sale transaction is a taxable event, meaning a gain or loss (capital gain/loss or income gain/loss, depending on various circumstances) is calculated at that moment in time. Gains may also accrue on unrealized amounts at year-end, for specific items [in general in the US, gains do not accrue at year-end for most things]. Moving cash that you have received from selling investments, from your brokerage account to your checking account, has no impact from a tax perspective. Best thing to do is convert your money into something that will retain value. Currency is a symbol of wealth, and can be significantly devalued with inflation. Something such as Gold or Silver might not allow you to see huge benefit, but its perhaps the safest bet (gold in particular, as silver is more volatile), as mentioned above, yes you do pay a little above spot price and receive a little below spot when and if you sell, but current projections for both gold and silver suggest that you won't lose money at least. Safe bet. Suggesting it is a bad idea at this time is just silly, and goes against the majority of advisers out there. You receive a 1099-misc for the value of the car. You claim that as income (even though you received goods rather than cash). When you sell the car, it would be much like selling any posession, and would cause no tax consequence unless the sale price was much different than the value... When you sell the car, you may have received more or less than the value of the car (likely less). If you sold it for more, then you might need to claim the additional money as income (perhaps short term capital gains). If you sold it for less, but to a friend or relative, then you might think you could claim a loss, but the tax collector would just claim that you had given them a gift, and attempt to collect the tax from them. Contest winners often have the frustration that they are taxed at the full value of the item(s) won, even though they would not value the item at that amount. And contest prizes often do not sell for the full value stated on the 1099, and often for much less. Marginal tax rates were higher prior to Reagan, and when a contest winner would sell an item for 80% of the value, they often paid most of the proceeds to taxes. "I held shares in BIND Therapeutics, a small biotechnology company on the NASDAQ that was liquidated on the chapter 11 auction block in 2016. There were sufficient proceeds to pay the debts and return some cash to shareholders, with payments in 2016 and 2017. (Some payments have yet to occur.) The whole process is counter-intuitive and full of landmines, both for tax preparation & planning and receiving payments: Landmine 0: Some shareholders will sell in a panic as soon as the chapter 11 is announced.  This would have been a huge mistake in the case of BIND, because the eventual liquidation payments were worth 3 or so times as much as the share price after chapter 11.  The amount of the liquidation payments wasn't immediately calculable, because the company's intellectual property had to be auctioned. Landmine 1: The large brokerages (Vanguard, Fidelity, TDA, and others) mischaracterized the distributions to shareholders on form 1099, distributed to both shareholders and the IRS. The bankruptcy trustee considered this to be their responsibility. According to the tax code and to the IRS website, the liquidation is taxed like a sale of stock, rather than a dividend. ""On the shareholder level, a complete liquidation can be thought of as a sale of all outstanding corporate stock held by the shareholders in exchange for all of the assets in that corporation. Like any sale of stock, the shareholder receives capital gain treatment on the difference between the amount received by the shareholder in the distribution and the cost or other basis of the stock."" Mischaracterizing the distributions as dividends makes them wrongly ineligible to be wiped out by the enormous capital loss on the stock.  Vanguard's error appeared on my own 1099, and the others were mentioned in an investor discussion on stocktwits.  However, Geoffrey L Berman, the bankruptcy trustee stated on twitter that while the payments are NOT dividends, the 1099s were the brokers' responsibility. Landmine 2: Many shareholders will wrongly attempt to claim the capital loss for tax year 2016, or they may have failed to understand the law in time for proper tax planning for tax year 2016. It does not matter that the company's BINDQ shares were cancelled in 2016.  According to the IRS website ""When a shareholder receives a series of distributions in liquidation, gain is recognized once all of the shareholder's stock basis is recovered. A loss, however, will not be recognized until the final distribution is received."" In particular, shareholders who receive the 2017 payment will not be able to take a capital loss for tax year 2016 because the liquidation wasn't complete.  Late discovery of this timing issue no doubt resulted in an end-of-year underestimation of 2016 overall capital gains for many, causing a failure to preemptively realize available capital losses elsewhere. I'm not going to carefully consider the following issues, which may or may not have some effect on the timing of the capital loss: Landmine 3: Surprisingly, it appears that some shareholders who sold their shares in 2016 still may not claim the capital loss for tax year 2016, because they will receive a liquidation distribution in 2017. Taken at face value, the IRS website's statement ""A loss, however, will not be recognized until the final distribution is received"" appears to apply to shareholders of record of August 30, 2016, who receive the payouts, even if they sold the shares after the record date.  However, to know for sure it might be worth carefully parsing the relevant tax code and treasury regs. Landmine 4: Some shareholders are completely cut out of the bankruptcy distribution. The bankruptcy plan only provides distributions for shareholders of record Aug 30, 2016.  Those who bought shares of BINDQ afterwards are out of luck. Landmine 5: According to the discussion on stocktwits, many shareholders have yet to receive or even learn of the existence of a form [more secure link showing brokers served here] required to accept 2017 payments.  To add to confusion there is apparently ongoing legal wrangling over whether the trustee is able to require this form. Worse, shareholders report difficulty getting brokers' required cooperation in submitting this form. Landmine 6: Hopefully there are no more landmines. Boom. DISCLAIMER: I am not a tax professional. Consult the tax code/treasury regulations/IRS publications when preparing your taxes.  They are more trustworthy than accountants, or at least more trustworthy than good ones." I guess Bitcoin are not that popular yet and hence there are no specific regulations. If currently it gets debated, it would be treated more like a Pre-Paid card or your Paypal account. As you have already paid taxes on the $$ you used to buy the Bitcoins there is no tax obligation as long as you keep using it to buy something else. The other way to look at it is as a commodity. If you have purchased a commodity and it has appreciated in value in future you may be liable to pay tax on the appreciated value. Think of it as a if you bought a house with the $$ and sold it later.   Once more serious trade starts happening, the governments around the world would bring in regulations. Till then there is nothing to worry about. According to the gnucash guide, losses are recorded as negative transactions against Income:Capital Gains.  I've followed this model in the past when dealing with stocks and commodities.  If on the other hand, you're talking about an asset which could normally follow a depreciation schedule, you might want to look at the section in the business guide dealing with asset depreciation. You are still selling one investment and buying another - the fact that they are managed by the same company should be irrelevant.  So yes, it would get the same tax treatment as if they were managed by different companies. According to the answers to this question, you generally aren't taxed on gains until you sell the asset in question. None of those answered specifically for the U.K., so perhaps someone else will be able to weigh in on that. To apply those ideas to your question, yes your gains and losses are taxable. If you originally traded something worth $100 for the bitcoins, then when you converted back to dollars you received $200, you would have a $100 gain, simply on the foreign exchange trade. That is, this $100 of income is in addition to any income you made from your business (selling goods). I own a gold mine and my cost of producing an ounce of gold is $600. Less than that, I lose money, anything over is profit. Today, at $1500, I sell futures to match my production for the next 2 years. I'm happy to lock in the profit. If gold goes to $3000, well, too bad, but if it drops to $500, I can still sell it for the $1500 as I mine it. I suppose I could also close out the contracts at a profit and still shut the mines down, but the point is illustrated. Government's tax citizens and businesses in their currency. Earnings (even earnings in cryptocurrencies) are taxable income. From my research it looks like its an income NOT effectively connected with the trade of business. This page has the exact details https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/effectively-connected-income-eci "The only ""authoritative document"" issued by the IRS to date relating to Cryptocurrencies is Notice 2014-21. It has this to say as the first Q&A: Q-1: How is virtual currency treated for federal tax purposes?   A-1: For federal tax purposes, virtual currency is treated as property. General tax principles applicable to property transactions apply to transactions using virtual currency. That is to say, it should be treated as property like any other asset. Basis reporting the same as any other property would apply, as described in IRS documentation like Publication 550, Investment Income and Expenses and Publication 551, Basis of Assets. You should be able to use the same basis tracking method as you would use for any other capital asset like stocks or bonds. Per Publication 550 ""How To Figure Gain or Loss"", You figure gain or loss on a sale or trade of property by comparing the amount you realize with the adjusted basis of the property. Gain. If the amount you realize from a sale or trade is more than the adjusted basis of the property you transfer, the difference is a gain. Loss. If the adjusted basis of the property you transfer is more than the amount you realize, the difference is a loss.  That is, the assumption with property is that you would be using specific identification. There are specific rules for mutual funds to allow for using average cost or defaulting to FIFO, but for general ""property"", including individual stocks and bonds, there is just Specific Identification or FIFO (and FIFO is just making an assumption about what you're choosing to sell first in the absence of any further information). You don't need to track exactly ""which Bitcoin"" was sold in terms of exactly how the transactions are on the Bitcoin ledger, it's just that you bought x bitcoins on date d, and when you sell a lot of up to x bitcoins you specify in your own records that the sale was of those specific bitcoins that you bought on date d and report it on your tax forms accordingly and keep track of how much of that lot is remaining. It works just like with stocks, where once you buy a share of XYZ Corp on one date and two shares on another date, you don't need to track the movement of stock certificates and ensure that you sell that exact certificate, you just identify which purchase lot is being sold at the time of sale." Many states have a simple method for assessing income tax on nonresidents.  If you have $X income in State A where you claim nonresident status and  $Y income overall, then you owe State A a fraction (X/Y) of the income  tax that would have been due on $Y income had you been a resident of State A.  In other words, compute the state income tax on $Y as per State A rules, and send us (X/Y) of that amount.  If you are a resident of State B, then State B  will tax you on $Y but give you some credit for taxes paid to State A. Thus, you might be required to file a State A income tax return regardless of how small $X is.  As a practical matter, many commercial real-estate  investments are set up as limited partnerships in which most of the annual taxable income is a small amount of portfolio income (usually interest income that you report on Schedule B of Form 1040), and the annual  bottom line is lots of passive losses which the limited partners report (but do not get to deduct) on the Federal return.  As a result, State A is unlikely to come after you for the tax on, say, $100 of interest income each year because it will cost them more to go after you than they will  recover from you. But, when the real estate is sold, there will (hopefully) be a big capital gain, most of which  will be sheltered from Federal tax since the passive losses finally get  to be deducted.  At this point, State A is not only owed a lot of money (it knows nothing of your passive losses etc) but, after it processes the income tax return that you filed for that year, it will likely demand that you file income tax returns for previous years as well. "Legally speaking, when you convert that bit-coin onto something else, the Israeli Tax Authority will look into the value of that something else, compare it to the original value of the previous something else you used to buy bit-coins (USD, in your example), and charge you capital gain taxes for the difference. According to the Israeli law you're supposed to pay taxes when selling (converting the bit-coin to something else), and since you're not using any formal bank or stock broker which will automatically deduct the taxes, you have to pay the taxes yourself. By not doing so you're committing a tax fraud. The real question you're asking is whether they'll come after you. Well, that depends on the amounts. They might. Pay attention: there's no statute of limitation for tax fraud in Israel. They may come after you in 50 years from now. Another thing to keep in mind: if you used bit-coins to buy something (services or products of any kind), you probably didn't pay the VAT (מע""מ) - which is another case of tax fraud on your behalf. PS: I'm not a lawyer or accountant, so get a professional advice, but I have been dealing with the Tax Authority in Israel, so I've got a pretty good idea of what the rules are."