CryptoTax - FIFO Tax & PnL Reporting Engine for Retail Crypto Investors
AI-Native Crypto Tax & Portfolio Reporting
Built a tax and portfolio reporting platform that ingests transactions from 30+ exchanges and wallets, computes FIFO cost-basis, and generates IRS Form 8949 + Schedule C in one click - shipped from clickable AI prototype to production in 10 weeks.
Most of our work is under NDA. Per agreement, we can share the work but not the company details - all names and identifying information shown here have been changed.
Impact
1 week scope, 2 weeks AI prototype, 7 weeks production build with FIFO tax engine.
Direct ingest from CEX APIs, on-chain wallets, CSV imports, and DeFi protocols.
IRS Form 8949 and Schedule C generated automatically with full audit trail.
AI tax advisor surfaces tax-loss harvesting opportunities and explains every gain or loss.
The Problem
Retail crypto investors were piecing together tax reports from spreadsheets, exchange CSVs and on-chain explorers - with no consistent FIFO cost basis, no audit trail, and no clear path to filing IRS Form 8949 without a CPA.
Our Solution
We unified transaction ingest, FIFO cost-basis computation, realised/unrealised PnL, and one-click IRS form generation into a single dashboard with a built-in AI tax advisor - validated through a clickable AI prototype before any production code.
The Challenge: Crypto Taxes Are a Mess
Every exchange exports differently, every wallet has its own format, and US tax rules treat each disposal as a taxable event. Retail users had no consistent way to file.
Fragmented Transaction Data
Every CEX, wallet, and DeFi protocol exports transactions in a different shape - different columns, fee handling, and time zones. Reconciliation by hand was error-prone.
No Consistent Cost Basis
FIFO, LIFO, and specific-ID cost-basis methods produce wildly different tax outcomes. Users had no tool that applied a single consistent method across every account.
Manual IRS Forms
Generating Form 8949 by hand from raw transactions is a multi-day exercise - and easy to get wrong in ways that trigger an audit.
Tax Advice Locked Behind CPAs
Retail users could not afford a crypto-savvy CPA, but generic tax software did not understand DeFi, staking, or NFTs at the level required for accurate filing.
Our Approach: 3 Phases in 10 Weeks
Discovery & Scope
Week 1: embedded with CryptoTax's product and tax-engineering teams to map every transaction type - buy, sell, swap, transfer, stake, NFT - and the FIFO cost-basis rules that apply to each.
AI-Driven Clickable Prototype
Weeks 2–3: built a fully interactive prototype with mocked transaction data, FIFO engine output, and AI tax advisor responses, so the team could click through every flow before we wrote a line of production code.
Production Build & Launch
Weeks 4–10: shipped the production platform with multi-exchange ingest, FIFO tax engine, IRS Form 8949 and Schedule C export, and an AI tax advisor trained on US crypto tax law.
Why It Works: Outcome-Based Differentiation
Speed to Value
Most tax platforms take 9–18 months to ship to production. We delivered a clickable AI prototype in 2 weeks and a live tax engine in 10.
AI-First Prototyping
Every flow - transaction ingest, FIFO engine, IRS form generation, tax advisor - was validated in the prototype before any production code touched live tax rules.
Single Accountable Team
Design, AI prototyping, tax-engine engineering and DevOps under one roof - no handoff between an app studio and a tax-engineering vendor.
Outcome-Based Engagement
CryptoTax paid for milestones and a working filing engine, not hours. Our incentives were tied directly to shipping a tool that users actually filed taxes with.
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