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Why are my margin calculations taking so long?
Why are my margin calculations taking so long?

Preparing margin data for tax reporting is time consuming and labor intensive. Read more about our process.

Oat avatar
Written by Oat
Updated over a week ago

At our Pro plan level and above, clients' crypto margin trade tax liability is calculated by our team of experts. This process can take a week or more, particularly during tax season, so we wanted to provide some transparency about how these figures are reached and why it is a time-consuming process.

First and foremost, margin calculations take time because it is largely a manual process; there's no pure software solution for translating margin trading data into transactions understood by the IRS. Behind the scenes, a team of real people is working through your data to get it tax-return-ready.

A large part of margin trade tax is collecting and triangulating data so that unrealized positions can be excluded from tax liability calculations. For example, if you had a $10,000 margin loss across 500 margin trades, but some of them were perpetuals, you can't simply report each as a $20 loss, because many of the positions may not actually be closed despite being reported in your PnL numbers.

Many tax reports provided by margin platforms don't actually provide data that is immediately useful. Rather than reporting individual taxable events in a machine-readable way, they report cumulative totals and raw transaction data. What's more, frequently these reports are not in the kind of standardized CSV formats that work with crypto tax software.

Our margin team will let you know what reports you'll need from the margin platforms you used. In addition to transaction histories and PnLs, this may include private APIs, "off menu" reports, or backend data feeds.

Once the required information is received, our experts will reformat and layer data in order to isolate taxable events that were realized from those that were included in cumulative PnLs but not actually realized (perpetuals).

Because crypto margin trading tax calculations are labor intensive and demand significant attention to detail, the process is time consuming. We ask you for your patience and understanding.

Files we need for your margin calculations, by exchange

PnL treatment

  • FTX software: API or CSVs, trades and PnL CSVs

  • LedgerX: trades_export and Derivatives-Balance-Statement CSVs

  • Kraken: API or CSVs, ledgers CSV

  • dYdX*: funding history, transfer history, and trade history

  • Kucoin futures: CSVs, futures PnL report, funding payments

  • Okex futures/options: futures account history, options account history, funding account history

  • Binance futures: API or CSVs, Binance futures PnL report or full Binance history files

  • Bitmex: API or CSV, wallet CSV

  • Bybit: API or CSV, 2 assets history outcome sheet inverse contract files (one USDT, the other with rest of tokens)

  • Phemex futures: CSV, CONTRACT_PNL file

* Requires VIP plan

Margin logic treatment (leveraged spot margin)

  • Poloniex: API or CSV, trade history

  • Binance cross/isolated spot margin: API, isolated margin and isolated margin trade history

  • Kucoin spot margin: CSV, margin trade history

  • Okex spot margin: CSV, margin account history

  • Huobi: CSVs, margin trade history, loan history

Both treatments

  • Binance: API, isolated margin trade history or full Binance history CSV

  • Bitfinex: API

  • Okex: CSVs, margin account history, futures account history, options account history, funding account history

Don’t see your margin exchange listed? Just send us all CSV data and a read-only API key, if available.

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