Nexo - A Way of Avoiding Paying Tax on your Cryptocurrency - Getting Equal Footing with the Super Wealthy.

Steve Jobs famously paid himself only a $1 salary. He wasn’t being particularly generous though as he had 5.5 million Apple shares. He did pay income tax on Apple stock options when he exercised rights on them however he also didn’t cash in any of his Apple shares when he was alive. You have to ask yourself “what was he living on in the years he didn’t cash in options”? Well he took out loans using his Apple shares as collateral. As they were loans he didn’t pay any income or capital gains tax on them. In fact it seems to be a very common way for the wealthy to avoid paying tax.

In a similar vein Nexo has come up with a way for crypto holders to avoid paying tax too. Instead of cashing in your crypto and paying yourself a salary in fiat which will be subject to capital gains tax you can take out a loan using your crypto-holdings as collateral. If you use Nexo as collateral you get a 50% discount.

Nexo will put the loan amount into your bank account and you pay off the loan in crypto. No crypto realized - no tax paid.

The interest rate is pretty steep, 16%, but it is competitive if you repay with Nexo, 8%. However you can pay the loan off immediately and by doing that you only pay 30 days worth of interest. If you were using crypto as your regular salary that would be the cheapest way to do it.

As a quick summary

Minimum loan - $1000 or equivalent in crypto (ie you can borrow to invest)
Availability - Worldwide in any major currency (and quite a few minor ones too)
Interest rate - 8% if repaid in Nexo 16% if repaid in fiat or other crypto.
Collateral required to be held in Nexo wallet - full amount
Collateral types - Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance Coin, Nexo.
Loan period - Flexible but the minimum interest paid is on 30days.
Credit Card - Optional.

Currently there is a vote on which other coins should be accepted as collateral. If you want to vote and get your favorite coin/token accepted click here..

Now the tax rules vary from country to country so it is probably a really good idea to check this out to see if it is feasible. Here is something in greater detail from Nexo on USA regulations.

Now all of this seems to me to be a very fine line between avoidance and straight up evasion; but if you are the type of person with no civic duty whatsoever, and would like to roll over the tax authorities you could give it a whirl. :P

It is almost definite that the tax authorities around the world will throw a fit as it makes tax evasion for the masses possible. The people behind Nexo are from the finance industry and so you assume they know what they are doing and will be lawyered up to the teeth however there are a lot of jurisdictions out there and some are not particularly friendly towards this type of behaviour.It's probably a good idea picking over the legislation and making sure that you had funds available just in case the government in your country introduced something retrospectively.

And remember this article is not intended to be tax or financial advice just some cogent information.

Links

https://nexo.io/vote
https://medium.com/nexo/heres-how-nexo-might-help-you-with-your-tax-situation-9614d5323f88

Take a look at my other articles. I always try to not give straight up "this is wonderful rahrahrah" type posts. This is because I know that many of you have brains and might actually be smarter than me. Your insights are quite possibly as valid as mine (Ain't hubris great?). Question everything but expect nothing in return

Soundbites for dime-store philosophers