Half of harvesting is the losses you cannot see.
The subtraction is easy. What decides whether the number is worth anything is the cost basis underneath it — and where the purchase is missing, every engine including ours fills that box with nothing. Against nothing a position cannot show a loss however far it has actually fallen, so the losses in those holdings do not come out small: they do not appear at all. Paste what you hold and see the two halves separately — what you can stand behind, and what is simply unmeasurable until a file turns up.
One per line:
asset, quantity, total cost basis, current value, acquired YYYY-MM-DD, basis?
— put defaulted in the last field where you do not have the
original purchase and your software filled it in.
—
This is what those positions are worth today, not a loss. Against a filled-in basis of zero nothing can ever show a loss, so these are not positions we measured and found nothing in — they are positions we cannot measure. Find the purchase and one moves into the column on the left.
A realised capital loss offsets capital gains first; only $3,000 of any excess reduces ordinary income in a year, and the rest carries forward. So the figure above is value against gains, not a refund cheque.
Which method leaves the most to harvest
Your cost-basis method decides which lots a past sale spent, and therefore which lots are still in your wallet to be harvested. One product in this market runs the methods side by side and shows you which produces the biggest harvestable loss. That is a good idea, and it is half an answer. Here is the other half, in four transactions.
The ledger. Buy 1 BTC at $10,000 in January 2021. Buy another at $60,000 in June 2021. Sell one for $50,000 in January 2026. It is worth $30,000 today.
| Method | Gain realised | Still harvestable | Net if you sold the loser too | Gain left standing | All of it together |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FIFO — spends the cheap lot | $40,000.00 | $30,000.00 | $10,000.00 | $0.00 | $10,000.00 |
| HIFO — spends the expensive lot | −$10,000.00 | $0.00 | −$10,000.00 | $20,000.00 | $10,000.00 |
Read the third column alone and HIFO looks $20,000 better. Read the last column and the two methods are identical, because they are identical: a cost-basis method moves money between the year you are filing and a later one, it does not make or destroy any. HIFO did not produce $20,000 less gain — it postponed $20,000 of gain into whatever year you sell the cheap lot. And notice the direction that matters for this page: the method that cost you least in tax this year is the one that left you nothing to harvest, because it has already spent your expensive lots. Ranked on harvestable loss alone, the answer is wrong about half the time.
A saved scan reports both halves on your own ledger, free. What none of this decides is whether you may switch: a method change reaches a year you may already have filed, specific identification wants records made at the time of each sale rather than chosen afterwards, and inconsistency between years is its own problem. That question belongs to whoever signs the return.
The same loss, in nine countries
Every harvesting screen in this market computes an American answer and, at best, warns you that it is American. A warning is not an answer. These rows are produced by the same nine statutory engines that power the country tools — the rates below are read out of those modules at build time, so this table cannot drift away from them. It is not a ranking and it is not a suggestion to move.
your own rate
A capital loss offsets capital gains first; only $3,000 of any excess reduces ordinary income in a year and the rest carries forward. Short-term losses meet short-term gains first, and those are taxed at ordinary rates — so the short-term half is usually the more valuable one. The working →
$2,961.00
A capital loss is deductible only to 70 % while the gain it is meant to cancel is taxed in full, and tax on capital income is 30 % — so the loss is worth 21 % of its face value, whatever your circumstances. The holding period does not matter here. The working →
$3,666.00
A loss is a ligningsmæssigt fradrag in box 58 worth about 26 %, while the gain you harvested it against is personal income in box 20 taxed at up to 53 % — and as a general rule THEY DO NOT OFFSET EACH OTHER AT ALL. Harvesting here does not cancel a gain; it claims a deduction worth half as much, somewhere else on the return. The working →
your own rate
Held more than a year, a private sale is not taxable at all — so the loss is not deductible either, and harvesting it achieves nothing. Only the part held a year or less is a § 23 loss, and it can be set against § 23 gains ONLY, not against other income. Of what you are holding at a loss, $3,100.00 is inside the year and $11,000.00 is outside it on the US 365-day line — and that line is not the German one. § 23 measures to the anniversary, so a position bought 1 March 2023 and sold 1 March 2024 is 366 days and long-term in the United States while still being INSIDE the German year and fully taxable. Anything within a day or two of the boundary has to be checked on the German rule, not on this split. The working →
your own rate
Buy the same property back within 30 days EITHER SIDE of the sale — you, your spouse, or a company you control — and the loss is DENIED. It is not destroyed: it is added to the adjusted cost base of what you still hold, so harvesting changes WHEN the loss lands, not whether it exists. An allowed loss enters the return at the 50 % inclusion rate. The working →
your own rate
The loss is allowable, but sell and buy back within 30 days and the repurchase is matched to the disposal before the pool — so the loss is computed against the new acquisition rather than against your pooled cost, and mostly does not land where you meant it to. The value then depends on your CGT rate and on the annual exempt amount, neither of which is in this file. The working →
your own rate
There is no wash-sale statute, but there is TA 2008/7 and Part IVA, and an arithmetic trap: a capital loss is applied at FULL value BEFORE the 50 %% discount. Harvest a loss against a gain on a parcel held more than twelve months and it does half its work. Against an undiscounted gain it does all of it — so in Australia WHICH gain you harvest against changes the answer, which is true nowhere else in this table. The working →
no answer
We will not put a number on this. The hankintameno-olettama lets a disposal deduct a fixed share of the SELLING PRICE instead of the real cost, and the filer takes whichever is larger — so on a position that has fallen far enough the deemed floor exceeds what you paid and the loss you were harvesting for disappears. Whether that happens depends on each parcel's own cost and sale price, not on a total. The working →
no answer
Harvesting barely exists here. A French loss arises only when the WHOLE portfolio is worth less than everything you ever paid into it — selling one line that has fallen while the rest is up produces a GAIN, because the gain is a fraction of the whole portfolio's acquisition price. And a net annual loss dies on 31 December instead of carrying forward, so a December harvest with no gains to meet is simply spent. Answering needs the portfolio's value at each disposal, which is a number that has to come from you. The working →
no answer
There is nothing to harvest. Box 3 does not tax a capital gain at all — it taxes a DEEMED return on the value you held at 00:00 on 1 January. Realising a loss in October changes nothing about the year just taxed, and the only thing a December sale moves is next year's reference value. The American habit of selling in the last week of the year has no Dutch equivalent. The working →
Where a value is missing it is missing on purpose. Either the rule needs a marginal rate that belongs to your whole return, or the question does not translate and a number would be worse than a refusal. The figures shown assume the same loss as the worked example above: $3,100 short-term and $11,000 long-term, substantiated.
The three that decide whether you may do it at all
Section 1091 applies to stock and securities and is widely understood not to reach digital assets, which is why harvesting is discussed at all. Note that this is a United States answer and does not travel. Check your own wash-sale exposure →
The superficial loss rule turns on identical property rather than on securities, so it reaches cryptoassets directly. Buy back inside thirty days either side and the loss is denied — deferred into the cost base of what you kept, not destroyed. Work out the Canadian rule →
Same-day and next-thirty-day acquisitions are matched before the s.104 pool, which reshapes the answer rather than denying it — and the matching is forward-only, unlike Canada's. Work out UK pooling →
Questions
What is tax-loss harvesting?
Selling something that has fallen in value so the loss becomes real, and using it against gains you have already taken. The mechanic is simple. What decides whether the number in front of you is worth anything is the cost basis it is measured against — and that is the part most tools do not talk about.
What do you mean, a loss you cannot see?
If your software could not find what you originally paid, it had to put something in the cost basis box. A responsible default is deliberately LOW — often nothing — because a low basis overstates your gain rather than understating it, which is the safe direction to be wrong in for tax. But it is the WRONG direction for harvesting: measured against a basis of nothing, a position that is genuinely down forty per cent looks like a gain, and the real loss vanishes. Harvest against a defaulted basis and you are claiming a loss nobody can substantiate.
So which figure should I trust?
The one with a purchase behind it. In our own scan, lots carrying a conservative default are pulled out of the headline and shown separately — by VALUE, not by loss, because a loss against a basis of zero is arithmetically impossible and a «loss on a defaulted basis» figure would read $0.00 forever while the money it is meant to flag sat right there. What the second figure tells you is how much of your portfolio is currently unmeasurable, and therefore how much is worth going to find a file for. Find the acquisition and the lot moves into the number that counts.
Does the wash-sale rule stop me?
In the United States, generally not for crypto. Section 1091 applies to stock and securities and the widely held view is that it does not reach digital assets — which is precisely why harvesting is discussed at all here. Note what that means: it is a UNITED STATES answer, and it does not travel.
What if I file in Canada or the UK?
Then the same trade behaves differently and the figure on most harvesting screens is not yours. Canada's superficial loss rule turns on «identical property» rather than on securities, so it reaches cryptoassets directly: sell at a loss, buy back inside thirty days either side, and the loss is DENIED — though not destroyed, it moves to the cost base of what you kept. The UK matches same-day and next-thirty-day acquisitions before the pool, which reshapes the answer rather than denying it. Both have a free calculator here.
How much is a loss actually worth?
Less than the headline, and it depends on your return rather than on your portfolio. A realised capital loss offsets capital gains first; only $3,000 of any excess reduces ordinary income in a year, and the rest carries forward indefinitely. That is why the rates on this page are ones YOU type: with none supplied it reports losses and makes no tax claim at all.
Does the holding period matter?
It changes what the loss is worth rather than whether you have it. A short-term loss offsets short-term gains first, and those are taxed at ordinary rates — so for most people a short-term loss is the more valuable one. Any tool that quietly nets everything together and shows you a single number has thrown that away, which is why this page splits them.
Are you telling me to sell?
No, and nothing on this page does. Whether to realise a loss depends on what you think the asset will do, what else is in your return, and what you intend to buy next — none of which is in a spreadsheet. This is information.
Is anything uploaded?
No. This page computes entirely in your browser.
On your real holdings
A free scan works this out from your actual exports and wallet addresses, values every position at the last documented daily close, and separates the lots whose basis it had to fill in from the ones with a purchase behind them. Free to see the answer.
Rewards complicate this in a way worth knowing about: their basis is the value you already paid income tax on, so a reward missing from your import shows up here as a position with no basis and therefore no visible loss at all. Staking rewards, income and basis →