Updated Septembder 2023
Unspent distributions for transfer and send transactions
CoinTracker is not correctly recording the amount that is not spent in a "send" transaction on UTXO blockchains such as Bitcoin and Cardano. Instead of showing the returned amount as a transfer, it is recorded as a receive and the crypto receives a new cost basis as if it were just purchased. This causes incorrect capital gains calculations.
Example, in the UTXO model, a wallet could send an amount of crypto (ADA, BTC) as payment to another address, but any unspent amount less than x could be returned to the original sender. For example, if the sender sent 100 ADA as payment for something, but only 60 ADA was actually spent, the sender would receive the 40 ADA back into another wallet within their HD wallet. Effectively, there are two transactions: 60 ADA was spent and 40 was 'transferred' to another wallet of theirs.
The expected CoinTracker behavior would be to create a send transaction for 60 ADA (so that only the 60 ADA triggers a taxable event) and create a transfer transaction for the 40 ADA that was returned. The amount return should retain its original cost basis and age for short/long term gains calculations.
If you wish to make manual modifications to correct this, you'll enter two transactions and add the correct tags for send and transfer:
  • A send transaction for the original amount.
  • A transfer transaction for the unspent amount that is received back to your wallet address.
This has been escalated to our engineering team for review, we will update this post once a fix is deployed.