This blog was last updated on September 25, 2020
Sovos’ Global Compliance Summit – Intelligent Reporting “Speaker Spotlight” Series continues with the introduction to an award-winning subject matter expert on tax in the Cryptocurrency industry. In this segment, we welcome Sheehan Chandrasekera of Cointracker, who will be attending & presenting at our upcoming conference in early October.
In this segment of the “Speaker Spotlight” Series, we hear from Shehan as he elaborates on the complexities of reporting on Crypto assets and offers a few best practices for ensuring compliant 10-series filing in the current landscape.
Thanks for joining us, Shehan!
Shehan Chandrasekera – Cointracker
Shehan Chandrasekera is one of the handful of CPAs in the country who is recognized as a real-world operator and a conceptual subject matter expert on cryptocurrency taxation. He is the Head of Tax Strategy at CoinTracker, a Forbes Tax Contributor and a CPE instructor who has won multiple awards: 2019 CPA Practice Advisor 40 under 40 accounting professionals, Outstanding Young CPA of the year, Rising Star of Texas, and has been mentioned as one of the accountants who will be helping to shape (and reshape) accounting in 2020 and beyond by Accounting Today. Shehan is a renowned subject matter expert who has conducted educational speaking engagements at organizations such as Google, Coinbase, Lyft, AICPA, American Bar Association, and State CPA Societies.
Sovos: Can you tell us a bit more about your experience in the field and how you came to love this industry?
Shehan: CoinTracker is one of the leading crypto tax software companies in the market right now. Just to give you a quick background about the company, we are a venture-backed startup that came out of Ycombinator. Our platform connects with users’ exchanges, wallets, blockchains, etc. and automatically produces gain and loss reports for tax purposes. We track over 20B in transaction volume and have integrations with over 200 wallets and exchanges.
Before joining CoinTracker as the Head of Tax Strategy, I was in the public accounting industry focusing on startups and cryptocurrency-related tax/accounting clients. I am also a contributor to Forbes where I maintain a column on crypto taxes and tax-saving strategies.
Sovos: What might we expect to learn from your GCS Intelligent Reporting session, this year?
Shehan: In my session this year, I will explain how cryptocurrency staking works and discuss any tax implications.
Sovos: What is the most common concern you are hearing related to this upcoming tax information reporting season?
Shehan: The most common concern I have at this time is that businesses don’t know which exact form to be issued. This is because the IRS puts all cryptocurrencies under the generic “property” classification and people interpret these rules in different ways.
Sovos: What is one best practice you would advise for those in Crypto who are responsible for reporting on 10-series forms this tax season?
Shehan: Without getting into too many technicalities and details, the one best practice I would advise to those responsible would be to report crypto-related earnings on 10-series forms. Third party reporting is absolutely necessary to improve compliance in the space. This is even more important if we want to attract more sophisticated institutional users to the [Cryptocurrency] space. Also, penalties for not filing (or incorrectly filing) these forms are really large.
