Should my company hold crypto as inventory or as capital property?
That is the first question and it is not answered by preference. It follows what the company is doing with the holding: coins bought and turned over as part of a trade look like inventory, a long-term treasury position looks like capital property, and a company doing both has to be able to show which holding is which. Decide it before the first purchase and write the reasoning down, because the answer drives the computation, the timing of income, and what happens on a later realisation.
Does my company have to report crypto held by a custodian abroad?
Where the custodian sits outside the country, foreign-property reporting is a live question, and it is easy to miss because nothing about the holding feels foreign from a desk. The relevant facts are where the custodian is established, what the arrangement with it actually is, and what the company is therefore treated as owning. Establish that at the outset and keep the custody agreements with the tax records rather than only with the treasury papers, so the point resurfaces at the right time each year.
How do we get the gains out to the shareholders?
Decide that before the gain is realised, because the route out determines how much of it survives the trip. A gain realised in a company is charged in the company, and the distribution of what remains is a second, separately taxed step. The characterisation question feeds into this as well, since it affects what the company has to distribute and in what form. Companies that treat the exit as a problem for later commonly find the two layers add up differently from what was assumed.
Does the accounting treatment decide the tax on corporate crypto?
Not decide, but start. The measurement basis used in the financial statements is where the tax computation begins, so the accounting policy chosen for the holding shapes the figures the computation has to work from and the adjustments needed to get from one to the other. That is why the accounting question comes first in practice, even though the tax question is the one that costs money. Settle the policy, then reconcile the tax treatment to it explicitly rather than by assumption.
Do we need a treasury policy before the company buys crypto?
You need one for the same reason you need a characterisation: the two decisions are the same decision seen from opposite sides. A policy that records what the holding is for, how long it is expected to be held, who may transact, where custody will sit and how the position will be measured answers most of the questions the computation later asks. Written after the fact it is an argument. Written before, it is evidence, and it stops the tax position drifting as people change.
Does frequent trading by the company change the treatment?
It can change the characterisation, and that changes everything downstream. Frequency, holding period, financing and the stated purpose of the activity all feed the inventory-or-capital question, and a company whose behaviour has drifted away from the policy it wrote has a problem with both. If the treasury function has started to trade, say so, revisit the characterisation, and adjust the accounting and the computation together rather than letting the return and the conduct diverge quietly.
Does GILTI apply to individuals?
Yes, and it lands harder on them. An individual US shareholder of a controlled foreign corporation has the same inclusion a corporate shareholder does, but without an election gets neither the corporate-level deduction nor credit for the foreign corporate tax already paid — so foreign profit can be taxed at individual rates with no relief for tax the company paid abroad. An election to be taxed as though through a domestic corporation is usually the first thing to model. See Form 5471 and CFCs.
What is Form 5471 and who has to file it?
The information return a US person files about a foreign corporation they own or control, in one of several filer categories that determine which schedules apply. It is not a tax computation, which is exactly why it gets missed — and why the penalty regime is severe. The consequence people underestimate is that a missing 5471 can keep the limitation period open on the whole return, not merely on the foreign company's figures. See Form 5471.
