Aave V3: tax classification of its transactions
How Aave V3 transactions classify for US tax: 21 verified contract-level rules across 10 chains, covering repay, deposit, borrow and more, each resolving to a category, a treatment, and a confidence score.
Example last verified 2026-08-06 against the live engine. CryptoTaxEdge Team.
What Aave V3 does on-chain
Aave V3 is the largest decentralized money market. Supplying mints aTokens against deposits, borrowing draws debt, and liquidations force dispositions; the engine separates these lending shapes at the selector level.
Categories and house treatments
Verified Aave V3 rules map to these categories from the closed classification taxonomy. Categories flagged as grey areas expose a documented house default and the alternative position, configurable per firm.
| Category | House treatment | Rules |
|---|---|---|
repay | non_taxable | 13 |
deposit | not fixed (GAP-3) | 3 |
borrow | non_taxable | 2 |
collateral_withdraw | non_taxable | 2 |
liquidation Grey area | disposal | 1 |
A real classification
{
"api_version": "v1",
"hash": "0x0008c6178140df4c448c5a4ebc92aaedf62ff2a9dfc6a7208f104d852d49c2e4",
"chain": "ethereum",
"category": "collateral_supply",
"treatment": "non_taxable",
"taxable": false,
"confidence": 85,
"needs_review": false,
"ledger_action": "Add to Pool",
"protocol": "Aave V3",
"description": "Assets deposited into a lending position: a aToken (aEthWETH) for the same economic interest was minted, not a cross-asset disposal. Treated as a non-taxable deposit.",
"review_note": null,
"grey_area": null,
"assets": {
"sent": [
{
"symbol": "WETH",
"amount": "200.047905",
"decimals": 18,
"action": "transferred",
"token_address": "0xc02aaa39b223fe8d0a0e5c4f27ead9083c756cc2",
"to": "0x4d5f47fa6a74757f35c14fd3a6ef8e3c9bc514e8"
}
],
"received": [
{
"symbol": "aEthWETH",
"amount": "200.089689",
"decimals": 18,
"action": "received",
"token_address": "0x4d5f47fa6a74757f35c14fd3a6ef8e3c9bc514e8",
"token_name": "Aave Ethereum WETH",
"from": "0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000"
}
],
"gas": null
}
}
Verbatim wire response from the live engine. Last verified 2026-08-06 by live replay. Check any transaction yourself in the Classification Explorer.
Verified rules
Behind this page sit 21 verified rules for Aave V3. Each one binds a specific contract interaction on a specific chain to a category and treatment, with a confidence band earned from repeated on-chain observation and cross-source agreement. Rule coverage by chain: arbitrum (3), avalanche (2), base (1), celo (3), ethereum (6), fantom (1), gnosis (1), optimism (1), polygon (2), scroll (1). A small illustrative sample:
| Chain | Category | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| ethereum | collateral_withdraw | high |
| arbitrum | collateral_withdraw | high |
| celo | repay | low |
| celo | borrow | low |
| arbitrum | liquidation | high |
Illustrative sample of the 21 verified rules behind this page: the full mappings are served through the API.
Limitations
What this page does not decide. Coverage reflects the verified Aave V3 contract set on the chains shown; deployments or peripheral contracts outside that set route to review rather than being guessed. Confidence is a corroboration signal, not an accuracy percentage, and grey-area categories are positions to be set at the firm level, not settled law. Chains: arbitrum, avalanche, base, celo, ethereum, fantom, gnosis, optimism, polygon, scroll.
Frequently asked questions
What tax treatment does this page document?
House treatment follows the CryptoTaxEdge Classification Standard. Categories with no fixed mapping (GAP-3) tell you to read the treatment field on the record rather than infer it from the category name.
Where is the closed vocabulary published?
The versioned Classification Standard at https://cryptotaxedge.com/standard/ enumerates emitted categories and the five-treatment enum. This encyclopedia page is a worked example on top of that Standard.
Are the wire examples still current?
Yes. Each example is verbatim engine output, re-verified on a daily replay against the live engine.
Not tax advice. CryptoTaxEdge is software, not a licensed tax advisor. Classifications and the treatments described here are informational only; verify results and consult a qualified tax professional before filing. IRC section references are general framing. Aave V3 is a third-party protocol; CryptoTaxEdge is not affiliated with it.