Photon Taxes: How Photon Sol Trades Are Taxed and How to Export Them (2026)

In the US, every Photon trade is a taxable crypto-to-crypto swap: buying a token with SOL disposes of SOL, and selling the token back disposes of the token, so each side can create a capital gain or loss. Photon has no tax report or documented trade export, so you import each Photon wallet's public address into crypto tax software, which reads the swaps from the Solana blockchain and builds Form 8949.

Risk notice: Crypto trading is high risk and memecoins can go to zero in minutes. Trading bots use hot wallets, and tax software can still get numbers wrong. This page is not financial advice; only trade what you can afford to lose.

Not tax advice: This guide summarizes what the IRS and other tax authorities have published. Rules change and your situation may differ. Talk to a tax professional before you file.

Facts on this page were checked October 23, 2026, from Photon's own docs, IRS pages and the sources linked below. This is a research-based guide built from published docs, not a hands-on trial. It is US-focused, with short notes for the UK, Canada and Australia.

How Photon trades are taxed (US)

Photon (review) is a web terminal that swaps tokens from Solana wallets it creates for you. The tax rules are the same as for any memecoin trade, per the IRS virtual currency FAQ:

• Crypto is property (FAQ 2), so general property tax rules apply.
• Swaps are taxable. Exchanging crypto "for another virtual currency" means you "recognize a capital gain or loss" (FAQ 16).
• A round trip is two disposals. The buy disposes of SOL; the sell disposes of the token.
• Short-term rates apply to anything held a year or less (FAQ 6), which is almost every memecoin trade. Net short-term gains are taxed as ordinary income, and net losses offset up to $3,000 of other income a year, with the rest carried forward (IRS Topic 409).

Each disposal goes on Form 8949, with totals on Schedule D. A full background is in our Solana memecoin taxes guide.

1099-DA: Congress repealed the broker reporting rule for non-custodial DeFi platforms in April 2025 (Cooley), so don't expect a form for Photon trades. The IRS says you must report "whether they receive a Form 1099-DA or not" (IRS). You may still get a 1099-DA from a US exchange where you bought the SOL you deposited.

Step 1: Find every Photon wallet

Photon generates a Solana wallet when you sign up, and accounts can hold up to five active wallets that you can archive and unarchive, according to Photon Guides, an independent guide site. List:

1. Every Photon wallet address, including archived ones you traded from during the year. Unarchive them in Photon to see them, or check your deposit history.
2. The wallet you funded from (Phantom, Solflare or an exchange) and the wallets you withdrew to.
3. Any Photon wallet on BNB Chain or Base. Photon runs separate sites for those chains, per Photon Guides. They use different wallets and need to be imported as BNB Chain or Base addresses.

You only need the public address. Photon shows your private key once at signup; never paste a private key or seed phrase into a tax tool, and be wary of any "tax helper" that asks for one.

Step 2: Import into tax software

Neither Photon's own docs nor Photon Guides describe a CSV or trade-history export. Tax software reads the chain instead:

• CoinTracker has a Photon page: add your public address and trades sync automatically, "no CSV needed."
• CoinLedger imports Solana wallets by public address; its help center says it calculates spot trades only (CoinLedger help).
• Koinly syncs a Solana address and says Jupiter spot trading is "fully supported" (Koinly).
• Awaken asks you to "add each address separately" (Awaken).

Then:

1. Link transfers. Moving SOL from Phantom to a Photon wallet, or between Photon wallets, isn't a sale. Mark these as transfers.
2. Fix missing prices. Brand-new tokens often have no price feed. Koinly users have reported "Missing market price" errors on Pump.fun memecoins (Koinly feedback). Use the SOL value of the swap from the transaction as the price.
3. Hide spam. Junk airdropped tokens you never sold aren't trades. Hide them rather than valuing them.
4. Spot-check. Open five or ten trades on Solscan and compare SOL in and out with the software.
5. Check the count, then buy. Twenty round trips a day is about 14,600 transactions a year. Compare plans in best crypto tax software for Solana.

Photon's 1% fee and cost basis

Photon's fee docs say fees "are collected in SOL and it is 1% of the initial token used for every buy and sell transaction." For taxes:

• Fees on a buy add to the token's basis; basis includes fees and "other acquisition costs" (IRS FAQ 8).
• Fees on a sell reduce proceeds; the Form 8949 instructions treat "digital asset transaction costs" as a selling expense (i8949).
• Priority fees and Jito tips you set in Photon are generally handled the same way. See Solana priority fees and slippage.

Tax software only gets this right if it reads the fee transfer as part of the swap. If the 1% shows up as a separate SOL "send" to an unknown address, merge it into the trade or tag it as a fee.

Limit, DCA and auto-sell orders

Photon offers limit orders, DCA and auto-buy/auto-sell triggers, per Photon Guides. Each filled order is still a normal swap from your wallet, so it imports like any other trade. The tax date is when the order fills, not when you set it.

Pump.fun tokens and rugs

Many Photon trades are tokens still on Pump.fun's bonding curve, where Pump.fun charges its own fee on top of Photon's (Pump.fun fees). Check that the software counts both. For bonding-curve specifics, see our Pump.fun taxes guide.

If a token rugged, selling it for almost nothing creates a realized loss. Simply holding a token that fell in value is less clear: an IRS Chief Counsel memo said a token that still traded was "not wholly worthless." Ask a professional before claiming a loss without selling.

Referral rewards

If you earn referral payouts from Photon or any other bot, note that the IRS has no guidance specific to trading-bot referral payouts, but crypto received for services is generally income at fair market value when received (IRS FAQ 9 and 12). Track any payouts with dates and values.

UK, Canada and Australia

The swap-is-a-disposal principle is similar in all three, but the details differ:

• UK: HMRC's manual lists "exchanging tokens for a different type of token" as a disposal for Capital Gains Tax (HMRC CRYPTO22100). UK pooling and same-day rules change how gains are calculated, so use a tool with UK reports such as Koinly or CoinLedger's international reports.
• Canada: the CRA treats trading one crypto-asset for another as a disposition (CRA). Frequent, short-term trading may be business income rather than capital gains, which changes how much is taxed.
• Australia: the ATO says a swap means "a CGT event happens to your original crypto asset," valued in Australian dollars (ATO).

Records to keep

1. Every Photon wallet address (active and archived) and every funding and withdrawal wallet.
2. Exchange statements and any 1099-DA you receive.
3. The tax software's audit report and your notes on any manual fixes.
4. Referral payouts with dates and values.

Same process, other bots: Axiom taxes, Trojan taxes and GMGN taxes. Still deciding whether to keep using Photon? See is Photon safe? and Photon alternatives.

Risk note

Memecoin trading can leave you with a tax bill even in a losing year, for example if gains are realized early and losses aren't. Tax software can misread swaps or miss wallets. This page is not tax advice; talk to a tax professional.