Tagged mining is ordinary income and a new lot. An unlabeled routing fee is not reclassified.
Not tax advice · reviewed 25 October 2026
Mining and node income
Notice 2014-21 treats bitcoin as property and describes virtual currency received for mining as ordinary income at fair market value when it is received. That value is the basis if you later sell. Interest and referral payouts follow the same shape in BasisFix: income first, a lot second, a capital sale only when the coins actually leave. The detail is on bitcoin interest income. The worksheet is a review with a tax pro.
What is tagged, and what is not
- River Bitcoin Activity uses a Mining tag. River Account Activity uses a mining transaction type. Both open a lot at the fair market value column and add that amount to mining income.
- A mining row with no dollar value still opens a lot and is left out of the income total. There is no price feed.
- Cash App Boost, when the asset is bitcoin, is “other” income, not mining. A round-up is a buy, not a reward.
- BasisFix does not classify an unlabeled Lightning routing fee, a channel open, or a node payout. If the CSV does not tag the row as mining, the importer will not invent that category. See Lightning payments.
Expenses of a mining operation are outside this worksheet. So is the question of whether an activity is a hobby or a business. The income summary is the fair market value of tagged rows, nothing else.
Questions
Where does mining show up on the worksheet?
On the income summary, not as a Form 8949 line. A tagged mining row is ordinary income at the fair market value in the file, and that value becomes the basis of a new lot. A later sale of those coins is the capital transaction.
What if the mining row has no dollar value?
The lot still opens. The income total leaves that row out. BasisFix does not look up a price and does not use zero.
Does a routing fee or a node reward get classified automatically?
No. BasisFix maps a row that the file already tags as mining. It does not decide that an unlabeled Lightning routing fee is income. If the export does not tag it, the row stays whatever the importer already understood, or it is skipped.