Recording the fees you paid
- Author
- CRYPTO PORT Editorial
- Published
- Updated
- Reading time
- 6 min
In short
Fees scatter across transactions and are hard to gather after the fact. Record trading fees, withdrawal fees and network fees separately, as they occur. How they may be treated for tax is a matter for the National Tax Agency's guidance and a tax professional.
Key points
- Trading, withdrawal and network fees are different in kind — log them separately
- Network fees are paid in crypto, so record the value at the time of payment too
- A failed transaction can still have consumed a fee
- How fees may be treated is set by the rules — ask a tax professional
Definition
A record of what you paid to transact: exchange trading fees, withdrawal fees, and blockchain network fees.
Individually fees are small, which is why they fall out of records. Over a year they add up, and they can bear on how a gain is computed. Collecting them retrospectively means moving between exchange CSVs, wallet history and block explorers — a lot of work for something that was trivial to note at the time.
There are three kinds. Exchange trading fees arise per execution and usually appear as a column in the CSV. Withdrawal fees arise when you take crypto or yen out and appear in the transfer history instead. Network fees — gas — are charged every time you do something on-chain, paid in that chain's native asset. The third is the hardest to capture.
The difficulty with network fees is that they are denominated in crypto. Knowing you paid 0.0012 ETH does not fix an amount; you need the yen value at that moment. Checking the fee in an explorer right after the transaction and noting an approximate yen figure alongside it makes an enormous difference later.
Watch failed transactions as well. A transfer or approval that fails can still have consumed a fee for the work attempted. Looking only at balances, this appears as an unexplained shortfall, so record failed transactions with their hashes too. Whether any of these fees can be treated as costs is set by the rules and varies by transaction type — confirm with the National Tax Agency's guidance and a tax professional.
Watch out for
- · This page is a general orientation, not tax advice
- · Whether a fee counts as a cost is set by the rules — ask a tax professional
- · Network fees are paid in crypto; without the yen value at the time you cannot reconstruct the amount
Frequently asked questions
Gas fees are tiny. Can I skip recording them?
Each one is small, but frequency adds up over a year. At minimum keep the transaction hashes so the amounts can be looked up later. Whether they need to be accounted for is a question for a tax professional.