Private ruling: Assessable income - cryptocurrency
Date of advice: 9 November 2023
Published: 18 December 2023
Ruling period: Year ended 30 June 20XX
Date scheme commenced: 1 July 20XX

Ruling: Q1: Are the cryptocurrency assets you received as a prize in a YouTube contest regarded as assessable income? | A1: No. The prize received by you for competing in the competition does not constitute either ordinary or statutory income under either subsection 6-5(1) or section 6-10 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 (ITAA 1997)? If you sell or otherwise dispose of an asset that was a prize, you must declare any capital gains you make in your tax return.

Relevant facts and circumstances: You are employed as a motion designer, your work includes animation, design, and video editing. Your employment is not related to social media and content creation. On XX XX 20XX, you and a friend entered a video competition with a non-fungible token (NFT) project on the Ethereum blockchain. The NFT project provides a platform for collaboration and innovation, and funds creative ideas using a treasury and voting system. The NFT project funds public infrastructure. The public infrastructure ran the competition. You were required to create a video promoting the public infrastructure, inviting people to enter the project and start their own journey. The competition required you to create an entertaining video and upload it to YouTube. You had to connect your Coin Wallet to the competition to submit your video. The top X videos with the most views and creativity went into a voting round where the top X won a prize of $XX,XXXUSDC each. You won first place. The prize money was sent to you in USDC. You received $XX,XXX.XX USDC of the prize winnings. Your friend received $XX,XXX.XX USDC of the prize winnings. The prize money was sent to an exchange (CoinSpot) and converted into fiat currency. You have evidenced the full receipt of the prize.

Relevant legislative provisions: Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 section 6-5 | Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 section 6-10