Crypto Tax Australia 2026: ATO Guide

Overview

Crypto assets are taxable in Australia. The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) says that crypto assets are not a form of money and that there are no special tax rules for them, so the ordinary income tax and capital gains tax (CGT) rules do all the work. For most people who buy and hold crypto, each crypto asset is a CGT asset, and disposing of one is a CGT event. Where crypto comes to you as a reward or as payment, its value is ordinary income instead.

Australia's tax year is called the income year and it runs from 1 July to 30 June. It is named by both calendar years, so 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026 is the 2025-26 income year. If you lodge your own return it is due by 31 October after the income year ends.

Two things set Australia apart. The first is the 50% CGT discount, which can halve a capital gain on an asset you held for at least 12 months. The second is that the discount ends on 1 July 2027. That is already law, not a proposal, and it comes with a deemed sale of everything you still hold at the end of 30 June 2027. Both are explained below.

This guide is general information, not tax advice. Your own facts decide the answer, so speak to a registered tax agent before you lodge.

Who Australia taxes

Australia taxes on residence, not citizenship. If you are an Australian resident for tax purposes you pay Australian tax on crypto income and capital gains wherever in the world they arise, and it makes no difference where the exchange, the wallet or the other party sits. A foreign resident is taxed on income from Australian sources, and a crypto asset is not by itself taxable Australian property.

Leaving Australia is itself a CGT event. When you stop being an Australian resident, CGT event I1 happens to the crypto you hold at that moment. You either recognise the gain then, at market value on the day residency ceases, or you choose to disregard it. If you disregard it, the crypto keeps its original cost base and stays inside the Australian CGT net until you eventually sell. The ATO's worked example is a taxpayer who deferred a A$12,000 gain on departure and was then taxed in Australia on the full A$42,000 gain when she sold three years later.

Investor, business or profit-making scheme

What you are doing with your crypto decides how it is taxed. Volume alone does not.

Investor

Most individuals are investors. Each crypto asset is a CGT asset, every disposal is a CGT event, and the 50% CGT discount is available where the holding period is long enough. Unless this guide says otherwise, it assumes you are an investor.

Carrying on a business

If you are carrying on a business of trading crypto, your crypto is trading stock. The cost of acquiring it is deductible, the proceeds of selling it are ordinary income, and you value opening and closing stock at each year end. Business profits are not capital gains at all, so the 50% discount never applies to them.

The ATO's indicators of carrying on a business are acting for commercial reasons and in a commercially viable way, intending or genuinely believing you will make a profit, operating in a planned, organised and business-like manner with proper records and a business plan, and repeating similar activities regularly. The ATO states plainly that the overall size of your transactions, a high volume of activity or a level of sophistication does not by itself make you a business.

Profit-making scheme

The ATO recognises a third category sitting between the two, where an arrangement is entered into deliberately to make a profit without amounting to a business. It lists a profit-making scheme alongside investing and business as a use of crypto, and as a possible basis for taxing an NFT on revenue account. No crypto guidance draws the boundary, so get advice if this might describe you.

There is no bright-line holding period that turns a trader into an investor in Australia. The 12-month period in the discount rules is a discount threshold, nothing more.

How a capital gain is worked out

A capital gain or loss arises only when a CGT event happens, and it is measured at the time of the event. For a straightforward sale the gain is your capital proceeds less the cost base of the parcel you disposed of.

Capital proceeds

Capital proceeds are what you received, valued in Australian dollars. Where you received another crypto asset rather than cash, the proceeds are the Australian dollar market value of the asset you received. Where the asset you received cannot be valued, for example a token that is not yet trading anywhere, you use the market value of the asset you gave up instead.

Cost base: five elements

A CGT asset's cost base has five elements.

• First: the money you paid, plus the market value of any other property you gave, to acquire the asset.
• Second: incidental costs, which is where exchange and brokerage fees on both the buy and the sell belong.
• Third: costs of owning the asset, including interest on money borrowed to buy it. This element is not available for a personal use asset and it is left out when you are working out a loss.
• Fourth: capital spending to increase or preserve the asset's value.
• Fifth: capital spending to establish, preserve or defend your title to it.

When you are working out a loss you use the reduced cost base, which is the same five elements without the third.

Fees paid in crypto

A network or gas fee paid in crypto does two things at once. The fee amount is itself a disposal of that crypto, with its own small gain or loss, and its Australian dollar value is an incidental cost of the transaction it paid for, so it belongs in the cost base of what you acquired or reduces the gain on what you sold. The ATO's published wrapping examples say only that they exclude gas and platform fees, so there is no ATO worked example showing how to allocate one.

Timing

The event happens when the transaction happens, not when cash lands in your bank account. A swap executed on 29 June falls in the income year that ends the next day, even if you never touched Australian dollars.

The 50% CGT discount

An Australian resident individual can reduce a capital gain by 50% where the CGT event happens to an asset acquired at least 12 months beforehand. A trust that is not a complying superannuation entity gets the same 50%. A complying superannuation entity gets 33 and one third per cent. A company gets no discount at all. Foreign and temporary residents lose the discount for ownership periods from 8 May 2012 and get an apportioned discount only for the periods when they were Australian residents.

Counting the 12 months

The ATO's counting rule excludes both the day you acquired the asset and the day of the CGT event. Crypto bought on 1 July 2024 therefore first qualifies on a disposal on 2 July 2025, not on 1 July 2025. One day either side of that line changes the taxable gain by half, so acquisition dates matter more here than almost anywhere else in this guide.

Capital losses come off before the discount

You apply capital losses first and take the discount on what is left. Doing it the other way round understates the tax. You may choose which gains your losses are applied against, and applying them to gains that are not discountable gives the lower result, because a dollar of loss shelters a whole dollar there instead of fifty cents.

A short illustration. Say you have a discountable gain of A$59,250, a non-discountable gain of A$6,033 and capital losses of A$15,300 for the year. Applying losses to the non-discountable gain first uses A$6,033 of them and leaves A$9,267, which comes off the discountable gain to leave A$49,983. Halving that gives a net capital gain of A$24,992. Applying the discount before the losses would produce a materially lower and incorrect figure. The order is set by statute and it is not a matter of preference.

There is no separate CGT rate

Australia has no standalone capital gains tax rate. Your net capital gain is added to your assessable income and taxed at your marginal rates, plus the 2% Medicare levy. The tax-free threshold is A$18,200 and the top marginal rate of 45% applies above A$190,000. The second bracket rate falls from 16% to 15% for the 2026-27 income year, with every other bracket and threshold unchanged. Confirm the current tables with the ATO, because rates are set annually.

What changes on 1 July 2027

This is the single biggest thing an Australian crypto holder needs to plan for, and it is already law. The Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Act 2026 received assent on 26 June 2026 as Act No. 49 of 2026, and the ATO confirms the measures are law and apply from 1 July 2027. They replace the 50% CGT discount for individuals, trusts and partnerships with cost base indexation and a minimum 30% tax rate on capital gains.

Three parts of it matter for crypto.

The discount switches off

For a CGT event happening on or after 1 July 2027, the discount percentage for an individual or a trust is 0% unless a residential housing carve-out applies, and no carve-out can apply to a crypto asset. Complying superannuation entities keep their 33 and one third per cent with no end date.

A deemed sale on 30 June 2027

An Australian resident individual who holds an asset at the end of 30 June 2027 and goes on holding it until a later sale is treated as having sold it just before 1 July 2027 at its market value at that moment, and as having bought it back immediately for the same amount. That deemed gain or loss is not taxed in 2026-27. It is deferred to the income year of the real sale, and it keeps its discount character, so a gain built up before 1 July 2027 still attracts the 50% discount whenever you actually sell.

The practical consequence is a record-keeping one. Every crypto holding you still have at the end of 30 June 2027 needs a defensible Australian dollar market value at that instant, because that one figure splits your eventual gain into a discounted part and an indexed part.

Indexation and the 30% minimum

For a CGT event on or after 1 July 2027, an individual's or trust's cost base is indexed for every element except the third, and for an asset already held on 30 June 2027 the indexation runs only from 1 July 2027. A resident individual then pays extra income tax to bring the rate on the qualifying part of their capital gains up to 30% before offsets. The minimum tax does not apply to a taxpayer who received any of a listed set of social support payments during the income year, including the age pension, JobSeeker, youth allowance, the disability support pension, parenting payment, family tax benefit and parental leave pay.

Which parcel did you sell

When you sell part of a holding bought at different times and prices, something has to decide which units left.

Australia has no published ATO rule on this for crypto. No ATO crypto page and no ATO capital gains page names first-in first-out (FIFO), last-in first-out (LIFO), highest-in first-out (HIFO), average cost or specific identification for crypto assets. What the ATO does say is that each crypto asset you hold is a separate CGT asset and that you need to keep details for each one.

The underlying law is parcel-based. Each acquisition is an acquisition of a CGT asset with its own cost base, and the gain is the proceeds for the parcel you disposed of less that parcel's cost base. Specific identification is therefore the legal starting point, and FIFO, LIFO and HIFO are conventions a taxpayer adopts to identify parcels that are not individually distinguishable, supported by adequate records. There is no mandated method, no election form and nothing irrevocable about the choice.

Treat that as a reading of the statute rather than a settled ATO rule. The ATO has also published nothing on whether one asset spread across several wallets and exchanges is a single pool or several. Whatever you adopt, apply it consistently, keep the working, and be ready to explain it.

No same-day or 30-day matching

Australia has none of the mechanical matching rules that the United Kingdom applies through its Section 104 pool. There is no same-day rule, no 30-day bed-and-breakfasting rule and no statutory wash-sale rule. What exists instead is the general anti-avoidance provision in Part IVA, which the ATO says it applies to wash sales and enforces using exchange data. That is a purpose test applied case by case rather than a day count, so there is no safe waiting period that makes a loss stick.

Common events and how they are taxed

Buying crypto with Australian dollars

Not a taxable event. It is an acquisition, and it fixes your cost base. Record the date, the Australian dollar amount and the fee.

Selling crypto for Australian dollars

A disposal. Capital proceeds less cost base gives the gain or loss, and the 12-month test decides whether the discount is available.

Crypto-to-crypto swaps

When you exchange or swap one crypto asset for another you dispose of one CGT asset and acquire another, so every swap is a disposal even though no cash changes hands. Your proceeds are the Australian dollar market value of what you received. This is the most commonly missed taxable event, because exchange statements usually show only the crypto amounts.

Spending crypto, gift cards and debit cards

Buying goods or services with crypto is a disposal. So is buying a gift card with crypto, where the proceeds are the market value of the card, and loading or topping up a gift or debit card with crypto, where the proceeds are the increase in the card balance. Spending from a card denominated in crypto is a disposal too.

Transfers between your own wallets

Not a disposal. The ATO states that transferring crypto assets from one digital wallet to another is not a disposal as long as you maintain ownership. Carry your cost base across and keep the records. The network fee consumed by the transfer is a separate disposal of the fee amount.

Staking and validation rewards

The market value of staking rewards is ordinary income at the time you receive the tokens, and it is declared as other income. That same market value becomes the cost base of the new tokens, so a later sale is an ordinary CGT event measured from there.

The rule is not limited to proof of stake. The ATO applies the same outcome to proof of authority and proof of credit validators, agent nodes and guardian nodes, premium stakers and comparable roles, and to rewards for proxy staking and for voting tokens in a consensus mechanism.

Airdrops

The ATO rewrote this guidance on 19 August 2026, and the current position is narrower than the old shorthand that airdrops are income.

• Received in return for goods or services: ordinary income. You include the market value in assessable income, and the tokens take a cost base equal to that same market value on the day you received them.
• Received any other way, where you are not carrying on a crypto trading business: not assessable at receipt. You do not include the market value in your income.
• Cost base of a non-income airdrop: the market value when you received it, not nil. It is nil only where the asset had no value or a negligible value at that time.
• Unsolicited tokens you never claim: never acquired at all, so there is no income and no CGT asset.

An airdropped asset is a separate CGT asset from whatever holding entitled you to it.

Chain splits

An investor who receives a new crypto asset from a chain split has neither income nor a capital gain at that time, and the new asset has a cost base of zero. The 12-month clock runs from the split, so the discount can be available on a later sale.

To work out which asset is new, compare rights and relationships. The chain that continues the original rights is the continuation and the other one is the new asset. If none of the post-split assets carries the original rights, a CGT event happens to the original asset, producing a capital loss equal to its cost base, and every post-split asset is new with a zero cost base.

Mining

Whether you are carrying on a business decides the treatment, and the ATO says plainly that not all miners are. A mining business holds mined crypto as trading stock and values it as closing and opening stock at each year end, with hardware, electricity and pool fees dealt with under the ordinary business rules.

For hobby mining the ATO's crypto pages state no treatment directly. What the ATO does say is that crypto received from a hobby or entertainment activity is not included in assessable income and that the costs of the hobby are not deductible. The cost base of hobby-mined coin is not addressed anywhere, so get advice if this is you.

DeFi lending, liquidity pools and wrapping

The ATO rewrote its DeFi guidance on 19 August 2026 and warns that the words lending, borrowing and interest in DeFi do not always carry their ordinary meaning.

• Lending and borrowing. Many DeFi lending and borrowing arrangements trigger a CGT event, generally because beneficial ownership ends. The ATO's operative test is that a CGT event generally happens if you transfer a fungible crypto asset to an address you do not control that already holds a balance of the same asset. Your proceeds are the market value of whatever you received in return, which may be another crypto asset or a right.
• Liquidity provision. Depositing into a liquidity pool is a CGT event, with proceeds equal to the market value of what you received for the deposit. Withdrawing triggers a further CGT event on the asset or right you received when you deposited.
• Yield farming rewards. Ordinary income at market value on receipt, taxed in a similar way to interest, with the new tokens taking a cost base equal to that market value.
• Wrapping and unwrapping. Both are CGT events. Wrapping happens when you send the original asset to the smart contract, because you no longer control it through your private key, and the wrapped asset takes a cost base equal to the market value of the original at that moment. Unwrapping is a CGT event when the wrapped asset is burnt.

The wrapping treatment rests on a draft determination that is not yet final, so it may change.

Gifts and donations

Giving crypto away is a disposal, and where you give it away or sell it cheaply your proceeds are its market value rather than what you actually got. Receiving a gift of crypto has no CGT consequence at the time, but record the date, the amount, the type and the market value on receipt, because that is what your later disposal is measured against.

Donating is also a disposal. A deduction is available only for a gift to a deductible gift recipient that can accept crypto in its own legal name, and only where the gift conditions are met. Three donations attract no CGT: a testamentary gift made under a will, a donation under the Cultural Gifts Program, and a donation of crypto that is a personal use asset.

Gambling and prize winnings

Capital gains and losses made directly from gambling, or from a game or competition with prizes, are excluded, and ordinary lottery, raffle and game-show prizes are generally not ordinary income.

Personal use assets

A capital gain on a personal use asset is disregarded where the first element of its cost base is A$10,000 or less. Losses on personal use assets are always disregarded, whatever the asset cost.

The exemption is far narrower than it sounds. The ATO judges it at the time of disposal by how you actually kept and used the asset, and your stated intention at purchase may be relevant but does not decide it. Crypto kept as an investment, in a profit-making scheme or in a business is never a personal use asset. Buying crypto specifically in order to convert it into cash, into another crypto asset, into a gift card, onto a prepaid debit card or through a payment gateway so that you can buy something is excluded except in rare situations.

There is an anti-avoidance rule for sets as well. Disposing of a set of personal use assets across several transactions in order to get under the A$10,000 threshold causes the set to be treated as one asset.

Assume the exemption does not apply to you unless a registered tax agent tells you it does.

Converting to Australian dollars

Every figure on an Australian return is in Australian dollars, so both legs of every transaction have to be translated.

The ATO has used Reserve Bank of Australia exchange rates since 1 January 2020 and directs taxpayers to the RBA daily rates. Where a currency is not on the RBA list you may use any reasonable externally sourced rate for it.

Valuation is at the time of the transaction. The ATO's own swap example uses the exchange rates shown on the digital asset exchange at the time of the transaction. The ATO has published no rule permitting or prohibiting daily-close or period-average pricing for crypto, and it has not named a required price source for a crypto-to-crypto pair, so your records need to show what you used.

Stablecoins get no special income tax treatment. A stablecoin is a crypto asset like any other, so every stablecoin leg of a trade is a disposal that can throw off a small gain or loss as the peg drifts or the Australian dollar moves.

Capital losses

A capital loss arises where your capital proceeds are less than the reduced cost base.

• Capital losses are ring-fenced to capital gains. You cannot deduct a net capital loss from salary or any other income.
• Unused net capital losses are carried forward indefinitely. There is no time limit, and there is no carry-back.
• Losses are applied in the order in which they were made, and current-year losses come off before prior-year net capital losses.
• Losses on a personal use asset are always disregarded. Losses on collectables can only be offset against gains on collectables.

Lost keys and theft

The ATO accepts a capital loss for crypto you lost access to or had stolen, if you can evidence ownership and the loss. A lost private key cannot be recovered, so the ATO treats the asset as lost rather than merely inaccessible. Its evidence list is specific: the public key, the date the private key was acquired, the date it was lost, the wallet address, what the crypto in that wallet cost, its value when the key was lost, evidence the wallet was under your control, possession of the hardware holding the wallet, and exchange transactions linked to your verified identity.

Compensation or insurance reduces the loss, and where it exceeds the cost base it produces a capital gain instead. A replacement-asset rollover can defer that gain if you acquire another crypto asset within a year of the end of the income year, or within a longer period the Commissioner allows.

Where the ATO has not published a position

A good deal of ordinary crypto activity has no ATO guidance at all. Where that is so, this guide says so rather than filling the gap, because an answer invented here would be worth nothing in a review. As at the review date shown above, the ATO has published no position on:

• Derivatives, margin and futures. Nothing on perpetual swaps, futures, options, margin trading, funding payments or liquidations, and no mark-to-market rule for crypto derivatives. This is the largest single gap.
• Bridging between chains. The wrapping analysis looks directly analogous, but the ATO has not said so.
• Liquid staking and restaking. The general DeFi test suggests that a deposit in exchange for a receipt token is a disposal, but no guidance names these arrangements.
• Slashing penalties. Nothing on whether a slashing loss is a capital loss, a deduction or neither.
• Rebasing tokens.
• Retroactive and points-based airdrops. The test is whether the tokens came in return for goods or services or another income-producing activity, and whether protocol usage that earns points counts is unaddressed.
• Worthless and delisted tokens. Australia has no negligible-value claim of the kind the United Kingdom operates, so you need an actual CGT event.
• Crypto held on an exchange that is in external administration.
• Whether an NFT can be a collectable. It matters, because collectable losses are quarantined to collectable gains and a collectable acquired for A$500 or less is exempt.
• The cost base of hobby-mined coin.
• Whether depositing crypto into a custodial exchange wallet is a disposal. The self-transfer rule turns on maintaining ownership, while the DeFi guidance says a CGT event generally happens when you send a fungible asset to an address you do not control that already holds a balance of the same asset. Those two statements pull in opposite directions for a pooled exchange wallet, and the ATO has not reconciled them.

Two of the newest positions also rest on draft rulings. The airdrop rewrite of 19 August 2026 sits alongside draft ruling TR 2026/D1, and the wrapping treatment alongside draft determination TD 2026/D2. Drafts are not binding until they are finalised, and if either is finalised in different terms the airdrop or wrapping position above will change.

Records the ATO expects

Keep records for five years, measured from the later of when the record was prepared or obtained, when the transactions were complete, and the year in which the CGT event happened. Records must be in English or readily translatable, and electronic copies are fine.

The ATO's list of what to keep is:

• receipts for buying, transferring and disposing of crypto assets
• the date of each transaction
• what the transaction was for and who the other party was, which can be their crypto address
• exchange records
• the Australian dollar value of the crypto at the time of each transaction
• records of agent, accountant and legal costs
• digital wallet records and keys
• software costs that relate to managing your tax affairs

The statutory duty goes further than the list. Where records do not exist you are required to reconstruct them, and failing to keep them is a strict liability offence. That matters because exchange exports are often incomplete, and a gap you find in July is far cheaper to close than one the ATO finds later.

Reporting and deadlines

There is no separate crypto return and no crypto schedule for individuals. Crypto goes into the ordinary individual income tax return.

• Capital gains go in the capital gains section. On the paper return that is question 18 in the supplementary section, where label H is the total current-year capital gain and label A is the net capital gain.
• Staking rewards, DeFi rewards and assessable airdrops are declared as other income.
• A CGT schedule is used where the return is for a company, trust or fund rather than an individual.

The self-lodgment deadline is 31 October following the end of the income year, so the 2025-26 return is due on 31 October 2026 and the 2026-27 return on 31 October 2027. Most registered tax agents have a concessional lodgment program and can lodge later, on a date that depends on your circumstances, but you have to engage the agent before 31 October to be covered.

Australia does not use provisional tax. It uses pay as you go instalments, entered on the basis of prior-year investment income.

What the ATO already sees

The ATO runs a crypto assets data-matching program under a published protocol covering 2014-15 to 2025-26. It obtains identity and transaction data from designated service providers and matches it against what taxpayers report. In practice the ATO already holds identity and transaction data from Australian exchanges going back to 2014-15, and it says its data analytics identify wash sales through access to exchange data.

The Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) is a separate and later development. On 17 December 2025 the government announced that it would implement the OECD framework along with a domestic crypto tax transparency reporting regime and related amendments to the Common Reporting Standard. The ATO states plainly that the measure is not yet law, and Australia's first exchange of information under CARF is expected to commence in 2028.

If your figures turn out to be wrong

You generally have two years to amend an assessment, running from the day after the notice of assessment was sent. A sole trader has four years for 2024-25 and later income years. Outside the limit the route is an objection rather than an amendment, and the ATO can amend outside the limit in exceptional circumstances such as evasion or fraud.

Penalties scale with behaviour. A shortfall attracts a base penalty of 25% for failing to take reasonable care, 50% for recklessness and 75% for intentional disregard of a tax law. Lodging late attracts a separate penalty that accrues for every 28 days the document is overdue and is capped for an individual. Voluntarily disclosing before the ATO tells you it will examine your affairs attracts the largest reduction in the base penalty, and disclosing afterwards attracts a smaller one. General interest charge runs daily and compounds on unpaid amounts, and interest incurred on or after 1 July 2025 is no longer deductible.

What Coinfig does for Australian users

Coinfig produces the calculations that support an Australian return. It does not lodge anything for you, it is not tax advice, and it does not promise an outcome.

• The Australian ruleset uses the 1 July to 30 June income year and labels each year the way the ATO does.
• Cost basis is calculated under FIFO, HIFO or LIFO, whichever you elect, across your connected accounts.
• Where an individual has capital gains or losses in the year, the report includes a Division 115 discount worksheet. It applies capital losses against gains held 12 months or less first, then against discountable gains, works the 50% discount on what remains, and shows the arithmetic. That loss ordering is your choice under Division 115 and a different ordering gives a different net capital gain, so the worksheet states the one it used instead of hiding it.
• Prior-year net capital losses are not carried into the worksheet, because the report covers a single income year.
• Companies get no worksheet, because a company cannot claim the discount.
• Personal use asset treatment is not applied automatically. Coinfig does not decide that a disposal was a personal use asset, so raise it with your tax agent if you think the exemption applies.
• There is no myTax export. The report gives you the figures to enter.

Every source this guide relies on is listed below with a dated archived copy, and you can browse the full archive of Australian official documents that Coinfig keeps.

Availability

Australia is live on Coinfig. Choose Australia as your country and Coinfig reports in Australian dollars, using the Australian ruleset, the 1 July to 30 June income year and the Division 115 worksheet described above. You can subscribe and pay in Australian dollars by card. See pricing for the plans and what each one includes.

Last reviewed

This guide was written from the ATO's published guidance and from the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 as in force on the review date shown above. Australian rules change, and the reform taking effect on 1 July 2027 will change a great deal of what is written here. Confirm the current position with the ATO and a registered tax agent before you lodge. This is general information, not tax advice.