NFTs across borders — do I need an adviser, or can I do it alone?
Some of it, yes — and we will say so on the call if that is the honest answer. The parts that are worth paying for are the ones where a missed election, a missed deadline or an unverified threshold costs more than the fee: characterisation drives income tax treatment; the buyer's location and the nature of the rights drive indirect tax.
What if I have already filed and got it wrong?
That is a common starting point. We re-derive the position, identify whether an amendment or a disclosure route is the right vehicle, and tell you which one preserves the relief that is still available. The order matters more than the speed.
How long will it take?
It depends on the documents rather than on us. Once the pack is complete most filings turn around inside a fortnight; anything that needs a certificate from a tax authority runs on that authority's timetable, which we tell you at the start rather than at the end.
Is selling an NFT a capital gain or business income?
It depends on what the seller actually did. A token can be inventory, a capital asset, a licence or a service, and the same token can sit in different regimes for different people: the artist who minted it, the trader who flips it and the studio producing them in series are not doing the same thing. Characterisation drives the income tax treatment, so it is the first question rather than a label applied at the end. It is answered from the facts of the activity — what was created, how often, with what intention and what effort — not from the asset class.
Do I charge sales tax when someone abroad buys my NFT?
Indirect tax on a token sale turns on where the buyer is and on the nature of the rights transferred, which are different questions from the income tax characterisation. A sale that is a supply of a service or a licence is placed by rules about the customer's location; the same sale treated as something else may be placed differently. The practical difficulty is usually evidential — knowing where the buyer was, and being able to show it later. If your sales happen somewhere that information is never captured, that gap is the thing to address first.
I minted the artwork myself. How is that income taxed?
Creators are frequently in a different regime from traders of the same token. If you produce work as an activity, what you make on the primary sale looks like the proceeds of that activity rather than the gain on an investment held and sold. What the buyer receives — ownership of a file, a licence to use it, an entitlement to something later — matters too, because it drives the indirect tax analysis of the same transaction. Both questions are better answered before a collection launches, because the terms attached to the token are much harder to change afterwards.
How are royalties from later resales of my NFTs treated?
A secondary-sale entitlement is not the same thing as the original sale and usually needs its own analysis: what the right actually is, where the payer is, and whether the receipt is income from the creative activity or something else. Royalties also arrive continuously and in token form, which makes record-keeping the real work — each receipt needs a date and a value at that date. Where payers are spread across countries, withholding at source can enter the picture as well, and that is decided by the character of the payment rather than by the platform.
Do I need to know where my NFT buyers are located?
For indirect tax the buyer's location is often the determining fact, so yes — and collecting it after the sale is usually impossible. The rights attached to the token and the location of the customer together decide where, if anywhere, tax is due on the supply. Many sellers meet the question only when a registration threshold or an enquiry raises it, by which point the transactions are settled and a wallet address is all that remains. If you mint through a platform, establish what location evidence it captures and keep your own copy of it.
I buy and resell NFTs. Am I running a business?
Possibly, and the answer changes more than the rate. Frequency, holding period, how purchases are funded, the effort put into selling and whether you hold tokens as stock all point one way or another. If the activity is a trade, the tokens are closer to inventory than to investments, which changes when profit is recognised, what expenses are available and how losses behave. It is worth settling the characterisation deliberately and applying it consistently, because a position that shifts from year to year is the one that attracts questions.
Can I avoid capital gains tax on a foreign property?
Not by virtue of it being foreign — there is no exemption for that, and the "keep it offshore" advice you may have read is how people acquire penalties rather than savings. What genuinely reduces the gain is ordinary and legitimate: principal residence relief where the property qualifies and the designation is made correctly, a properly built cost base including acquisition costs and capital improvements, the timing of the disposition, the treaty rules for real property, and credit for the foreign tax paid. See principal residence and foreign property.
Do American citizens living abroad have to pay taxes?
American expats and green card holders need to file US returns for life, and many of them pay little or no US tax once the relief is applied — but the filing is what unlocks the relief, so the two questions have different answers. The exclusion for foreign earned income, the credit for foreign tax already paid and the treaty between the two countries between them usually leave the total at roughly the higher of the two countries' tax rather than the sum. Skip the return and none of it applies. See Americans abroad.
