Buying U.S. Stocks with Binance Assets: What Records to Keep Before Filing Taxes

Binance

27 October 2026

What records you need to keep before filing taxes when buying U.S. stocks with Binance assets depends on which type of "U.S. stock" you bought. Binance currently offers two paths: direct stock investment (holding real shares through Nest Trading) and bStocks (tokenized securities, backed 1:1 by custodied U.S. stocks, but you hold tokens rather than shares). The two have different tax characteristics and require different records. Direct stock investment is closer to a traditional brokerage holding, with records focused on cost basis and sale proceeds. bStocks are legally classified as "instruments representing specific financial instruments," not shares, and their tax treatment is closer to crypto assets—but not exactly the same.

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For most Chinese-speaking readers, there is one premise to clarify first: which tax jurisdiction you file in. Binance offers this service to users outside the United States, but "outside the U.S." does not mean "Chinese tax residents automatically fall under a fixed set of rules." The overseas investment reporting obligations of Chinese tax residents, the handling of U.S. withholding tax, and whether Binance provides annual tax documents for your region are three separate issues. Below, I will write from two angles: "what to keep regardless of where you file" and "additional branches under different circumstances."

Direct Stocks: Keep Records Like a Brokerage Account

If you use Binance's direct stock investment feature, you directly hold securities ownership after purchase and are entitled to dividends and corporate actions. In this case, Binance's partner broker (arranged by Nest Trading, custodied by Alpaca) is closer to an overseas broker for tax purposes.

Records you need to keep at minimum include: trade confirmations for every buy (date, ticker, quantity, execution price, what asset was used to pay), trade confirmations for every sell (same as above, plus sale proceeds), dividend credit records (if any, note whether tax was already withheld), and year-end balance snapshots of your holdings. The purpose of these records is to let you calculate the cost basis and holding period for each trade—long-term capital gains (held over one year) and short-term gains are taxed at different rates in many jurisdictions.

Whether Binance automatically generates tax documents similar to U.S. Form 1099-B or 1099-DA cannot currently be confirmed from public information. Do not assume it will send compliant tax forms at the start of the year like a U.S. broker. A safer approach is to export your trade records after each transaction, or export the complete transaction history from Binance at year-end and organize your cost basis yourself. If your tax residency involves the United States (for example, U.S. citizens or green card holders), the IRS has made clear that digital asset brokers must provide Form 1099-DA, but whether Binance falls under the definition of a "broker" and fulfills this obligation also cannot be confirmed. You should verify this with your tax advisor.

bStocks: Record Logic Closer to Crypto Assets, with an Extra Layer

The official characterization of bStocks is clear: they are tokenized securities, representing an interest in the relevant securities held by the issuer—not direct ownership of the underlying shares. You buy and sell bStocks on Binance's spot market using USDT, USDC, or BNB, with on-chain settlement and 24/7 trading. Dividends are not paid in cash but are automatically reinvested through a "multiplier" mechanism, and U.S. withholding tax must be paid before reinvestment (the official announcement states the current rate is 30%).

This means you need one extra layer of records compared to direct stocks: which asset you used to buy the bStocks. If you bought TSLAB (Tesla's bStock) with USDT, the transaction may be split into two steps for tax purposes: first, the disposal of USDT (if USDT has a gain or loss relative to your cost basis), and second, the acquisition of bStocks. The same applies when selling. Discussions in the U.S. tax community have already pointed out that tokenized stock transactions still need to be reported under digital asset rules, and brokers need to issue 1099-DA, but "regulations need to catch up with technology." In Chinese tax practice, crypto assets currently sit in a state of "regulatory denial, tax law silence"—there is no specific regulation, but the general provisions of the Individual Income Tax Law do not exclude coverage of disposal gains. If you are a Chinese tax resident, whether the buy-sell spread on bStocks should be reported as "income from property transfer" and how to determine cost basis currently has no publicly available clear guidance.

In practice, at minimum keep: every bStocks buy and sell record (time, ticker, quantity, price, payment currency), every exchange record between USDT/USDC/BNB and fiat (if you need to reconstruct the original cost of these stablecoins or BNB), on-chain or account records of dividend reinvestment (multiplier adjustments that increase your balance correspond to a dividend income item on which tax was already withheld), and on-chain transaction hashes for withdrawals to self-custody wallets (if you made withdrawals). bStocks can be withdrawn to a BNB Chain wallet. Once they leave Binance custody, Binance no longer holds your position records, and future cost basis depends entirely on the on-chain records and transfer history you save yourself.

An Easily Overlooked Record: Source of Funds

Whether you buy direct stocks or bStocks, you pay with crypto assets in your Binance account. If your crypto assets themselves have a complex acquisition history (for example, BTC bought years ago, mining income, airdrops, or transfers from other exchanges), you may need to prove the cost basis of the USDT or BNB used to buy the stocks when filing taxes. Binance will not trace the source of these assets for you. At the moment you buy U.S. stocks or bStocks, it is best to note in a memo or separate spreadsheet: how much USDT/BNB was used for this payment, where these assets came from, and what cost you recorded for them at the time. Otherwise, when tax season arrives, you may face a pile of trade records but be unable to calculate your true taxable income.

Three Things to Do Right Now

First, confirm your tax residency status and filing obligations. Chinese tax residents have worldwide tax obligations. Overseas income is generally reported between March 1 and June 30 of the following year, and taxes already paid overseas can be credited within limits. If you also have U.S. tax status, the rules are completely different and need to be verified separately.

Second, check what data you can export from Binance's trade history. The usual path is Wallet → Transaction History → Export, but the specific entry point and exportable fields change with version updates—refer to the actual interface of your account. After exporting, check whether it includes time, asset, quantity, price, fees, and counterparty information. If bStocks trade records are mixed with regular spot trades in the export file, you need to tag and separate them yourself.

Third, do not wait until tax season to organize everything. Direct stocks and bStocks follow different record-keeping logic, and once mixed together, they are hard to separate. Spend a few dozen seconds at the time of each transaction to record a line in a spreadsheet or bookkeeping tool—this is far more reliable than reconstructing from hundreds of transaction entries afterward.