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Air Drop, Bonus or Interest?

What’s the difference between Airdrop, Bonus, and Interest?

Understanding the nature of your income transactions is important for both portfolio tracking and tax reporting. Below are general definitions used by CoinTracking:

  • Airdrop: Tokens received without action, often automatically and sometimes involuntarily.

  • Bonus / Reward: Earned by performing actions such as completing quizzes, joining referral programs, or promotional activities.

  • Interest: Earned by holding or lending coins on exchanges or DeFi platforms.


What are some concrete examples of bonuses and rewards?

These are typically one-time incentive-based earnings:

  • Referral Programs:

    • Binance or Coinbase referral bonuses

  • Advertising Rewards:

    • Basic Attention Token (BAT) via Brave Browser

  • Educational Programs:

    • Coinbase Earn / CoinMarketCap Earn quizzes

    • Bitpanda Academy

  • Test Participation:

    • Cardano Incentivized Testnet reward

  • High-Yield Promotions:

    • Binance high-yield bonus for ADA deposits


What are examples of interest income?

These are passive earnings based on your holdings:

  • Binance Launchpad: Rewards for holding Binance USD or BNB.

  • Token-specific Yield:

    • Holding NEO earns GAS

    • Holding VeChain earns VTHO

    • Holding Ontology earns ONG


Can I exclude certain income from the tax report?

Yes. You can exclude specific income types (like staking rewards or airdrops) in your Extended Tax Report Settings using the toggles provided.

Additionally, if you want to exclude airdrops from your income report entirely, use the "Airdrop (non taxable)" transaction type when entering the data.


Why do some incoming transactions not use 0 USD cost basis?

By default, all incoming transactions (including income, gifts, mined coins) are recorded with the fair market value at the time of receipt. If you want to override this and calculate gains from a zero cost basis, follow these steps:

  1. Go to the Realized and Unrealized Gains page.

  2. Open the Filter section.

  3. Double-click the relevant transaction type (e.g., Gift, Airdrop).

  4. Move the slider to the middle position.

  5. Apply the filter.



This change will use a 0 USD cost basis for gain calculations on those transactions.


How should I enter forked or donated coins?

Depending on your country’s tax rules, here are two ways:

  1. Standard Entry:

    • Enter as “Gift” or “Airdrop”

    • CoinTracking uses the value at the time of receipt as the cost basis

    • Profit or loss is calculated at sale

    • The income is reported in the year of receipt

  2. Zero Cost Entry:

    • Enter as “Gift” or “Airdrop”

    • Then, adjust the cost basis to zero via the Gains page filter

    • Full value is recognized as profit upon sale

    • You can still exclude this from income report via tax settings


Summary

  • Classification may vary by tax jurisdiction. Consult a tax advisor for compliance.

Some exchanges may import these income types inconsistently. You can manually correct the transaction type on the Transactions page if needed.

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