TrueStake
Staking tax, policy, and yield decomposition — written from the same reconciled data the product runs on, with citations.
IRS examiners ask for identifiers and transaction-level records, not totals. Why staking records anchored to validator pubkeys hold up where wallet-level summaries fall apart.
Every staking record asks you to trust something — your own chain events, a protocol's Oracle, or a data vendor's say-so. Naming the trust model is the first step to knowing what your records are worth.
TrueStake bills on validator-years — validators reconciled over time — never on ETH held or portfolio value. What the unit means, how proration works, and why the distinction matters.
Form 1099-DA arrived with the 2025 tax year — and most solo stakers will never receive one. What the form actually reports, who's excluded, and what self-custodied validators should keep instead.
A walk through TrueStake's reconciliation methodology: how one on-chain settlement event becomes one cited, verified line in an audit-defensible record — and what happens when the numbers don't match.
Slashing and inactivity-leak penalties reduce your validator balance — but whether you can deduct those losses on a US federal return is genuinely unsettled. A plain-English walk through IRC §165, TCJA §67(g), and the trade-or-business question.
Federal AGI conformity means most states tax staking rewards automatically — but most crypto-tax tools stop at the federal number. Here's the state overlay solo validators need to understand.
MEV-Boost tips pay a different address than your withdrawal. Most crypto-tax tools miss them entirely. Here's how MEV fits under IRC §61 — and why the IRS has never specifically addressed it.
When you sell staked or reward ETH, your gain depends on the basis of each lot. Here's how FMV-at-receipt becomes cost basis, how IRC §1001 governs the disposition, and why per-receipt tax-lot tracking beats a wallet average.
How to put a correct dollar value on each staking reward — the FMV-at-dominion-and-control rule, why the timestamp on each on-chain receipt matters, and what makes a price methodology defensible to an auditor.
The timing question matters as much as the amount. This article explains dominion-and-control under Rev. Rul. 2023-14, the IRC §451 constructive-receipt doctrine, the Jarrett foreclosure, and the open EIP-7002 question that current guidance doesn't reach.
Yes — ETH staking rewards are ordinary income under IRC §61, recognized at fair market value when you gain dominion and control. Here's what Rev. Rul. 2023-14 actually says for solo validators.
The Kiln September 2025 incident exposed the audit-trail gap in SaaS-managed staking. Provider reports are a black box; on-chain data is unreconciled. Here's how independent reconciliation closes it.
Rev. Rul. 2023-14, the Jarrett follow-on, 1099-DA phase-in, and what solo validators need to know about US staking-tax policy heading into the 2026 filing year.
Every existing crypto-tax tool reads wallet addresses. None reads validator pubkeys. Here's why that matters for your IRS-defensible return — and what a 100-wei reconciliation gate actually does.