The year-end checklist
updated november 2026 · ~5 min · basisproof research · not tax advice
Six steps, in order — each one is cheap in November and expensive in January. Everything below links to the deeper guide where the mechanics live.
1 · Pull the full-year record while it exists
The venue's own fills endpoint retains roughly the last 30 hours — a December pull from it is not a year, it's a day and a half. A full-year record comes from chain indexers (HypurrScan, or an archive RPC like Alchemy), which see every fill, ledger delta and funding event your address ever produced.
Do this now, not in January: indexer pulls for an active account take time, and finding gaps in the record is cheap in November and miserable on January 20. How the record actually works →
2 · Get the one number everything else depends on
Your year-to-date realized PnL — fills, funding and signed fees recomputed, not guessed — is the input to every December decision. You cannot evaluate a harvest, size a quarterly payment, or sanity-check a form against a number you don't have.
The free check produces it in minutes: realized PnL by market, funding paid vs received, fees net of rebates, and the two-axis venue reconciliation that shows whether the venue's own series agree with your ledger. Run the free check →
3 · Decide what's worth harvesting — before the deadline
Realizing a loss requires a closing fill timestamped on or before December 31 (your tax year's boundary — check whether your household files on UTC or local time with your preparer). An open loss on January 1 is next year's problem; a closed one on December 30 is this year's deduction.
Perps aren't covered by the stock wash-sale statute as written today, but several filers keep a 30-day buffer anyway — a repurchase on December 15 is cleaner than one on December 30. Either way, the decision needs your realized number first. Tax-loss harvesting on Hyperliquid →
4 · Reconcile every stream that isn't a trade
A year of activity leaves more than fills. Walk each non-trade stream and confirm it's in your record: funding payments (a separate endpoint — tools that only read fills report $0), HYPE staking rewards (receipt-at-FMV income, Rev. Rul. 2023-14), the genesis airdrop and any other claims (Rev. Rul. 2019-24), and vault deposits, withdrawals and distributions (boundary flows with no fills at all).
Funding: guide · live rates tool — Staking: guide — Airdrop: guide — Vaults: guide
5 · Funded-account traders: enumerate the payout leg
If you traded a prop firm's capital, the fills belong to the firm's book — your taxable record is the payout stream into your own addresses. Pull every inbound transfer and list it as the income leg it is; do not let it merge into 'deposits' in your own book.
The report's boundary-flow table lists each transfer into your addresses with counterparty and amount — the payout stream is enumerable line by line. Funded account taxes →
6 · Set up for January's mismatch
In January your CEXs will send 1099-DAs reporting gross proceeds — not profit — with basis missing on anything transferred in. The form will not match your records; that is by design. What changes the outcome is having the lot-level record ready before the form arrives.
Your December insurance policy is a verified export: Form 8949 rows, or the TurboTax/Koinly import built from the same fills — generated from a record you've already reconciled. Reconciling the 1099-DA → · Getting the export →
Common questions
?What's the actual deadline for year-end trades?
A disposal counts in the tax year its fill executes — the closing trade needs to be on-chain before your year boundary (December 31; confirm UTC vs local time with your preparer). Open positions at the boundary are unrealized and carry into next year.
?Do I need a checklist if I only lost money this year?
Yes — losses are the point of December. A realized loss is this year's deduction; an unrealized one is nothing. And the record still needs pulling: the venue drops your fills after ~30 hours regardless of whether the year was green or red.
?When do the 1099-DA forms actually arrive?
Brokers must furnish them by mid-February for the prior year (the same February window as other 1099s). Expect most custodial exchanges to deliver in January. Reconciling against your own record is a December job; the form just confirms which lines need explaining.
?I traded on multiple addresses — how do I close the year?
Each address needs its own complete record first, then aggregation. Transfers between your own addresses aren't taxable, but they must be classified as internal or they look like unexplained external flows. The report merges address books only after each one reconciles independently.
Sources & method
Step 2 takes minutes
The free check recomputes your realized PnL, funding and signed fees from public data — the number every other step depends on.