Curriculum·Freshman·F108
Records, Taxes, and Operating Like an Adult
An illustration built on a documented rule and a documented precedent, not a named incident. A US user receives a Form 1099-DA showing $180,000 in proceeds and no cost basis, because the assets were transferred in from self-custody and the broker never saw what was paid for them.
Lesson 1 opens on
Revenue Ruling 2023-14 and the Jarrett litigation
In Revenue Ruling 2023-14, issued 31 July 2023, the IRS set out its position that a taxpayer who stakes cryptocurrency on a proof-of-stake network and receives validation rewards must include the fair market value of those rewards in gross income in the year they gain dominion and control over them. Joshua and Jessica Jarrett had argued the opposite in litigation beginning in 2021 over Tezos rewards, contending that newly created tokens are new property and should not be income until sold or exchanged. The government issued them a refund before the argument was heard, and the Sixth Circuit held in 2023 that the refund mooted the case, leaving the substantive question undecided.
Jurisdiction · as of 2026-09
United States federal tax rules only, and only as they stood on the date beside this line: the 1099-DA regime is mid-transition, with gross proceeds reporting from 2025 transactions and basis reporting from 2026, and the Revenue Procedure 2024-28 allocation safe harbor has already changed what correct looks like once. Treatment differs by country, including whether a swap between tokens is a disposal at all. Take the questions this course teaches you to ask to somebody qualified where you live.
The lessons
- F108-01The taxable events mapClassify any crypto action as a disposal, an income event, or neither, and say whyabout 30 min · opens on Revenue Ruling 2023-14 and the Jarrett litigation
- F108-02Basis and the 2026 regimeDefine basis and explain why an unproven basis is treated as zeroabout 40 min · opens on Revenue Procedure 2024-28 and the safe harbor deadline
- F108-03Form 1099-DA in practiceExplain what document matching is, and why a correct return can still generate a noticeabout 24 min · opens on The Form 1099-K wave and the CP2000 notices
- F108-04Building the record habitCapture the six fields that make a transaction reconstructable, at the moment it happensabout 25 min · opens on The records nobody kept
Labs
F108-L
A supplied one-year wallet export, as a tax tool classified it, with three rows the tool got wrong, because it always does. Reconcile it by hand: lot cost basis, first-in-first-out gains, the transfer booked as a sale, the airdrop given no basis, the gas the tool dropped, and the corrected totals. Twenty questions, timed, 18 of 20 to pass. Running the same reconciliation on your own export is the point of the course and is done on your own machine; the platform never sees it.