Crypto Tax

Crypto Tax Australia: The Complete FY2025-26 Guide

Every ATO rule on crypto tax in FY2025-26: CGT events, staking income, the 50% discount, data matching and records — independent and ATO-cited throughout.

YCG Research Desk

Published

12 June 2026

Fact-checked & updated

12 June 2026

Crypto is taxed in Australia. The ATO classifies crypto assets as capital gains tax (CGT) assets — property, not money — so selling, swapping, spending or gifting them triggers a CGT event, while staking rewards and most airdrops are taxed as ordinary income when received. Net gains are taxed at your marginal rate, with a 50 per cent discount available on assets held over 12 months.

This guide sets out every rule that applies for the financial year ending 30 June 2026, with each claim linked to the ATO source it comes from. If you want a quick estimate first, our crypto tax calculator estimates how the CGT rules apply to figures you enter — an illustration only, not your assessed position — and this guide covers the rules behind the numbers.

How the ATO classifies crypto

The ATO does not treat crypto as foreign currency or legal tender. For almost all personal investors, a crypto asset — bitcoin, ether, stablecoins, NFTs, governance tokens — is a CGT asset, in the same broad category as shares or an investment property. Crypto itself is legal to hold and trade in Australia; the regulatory framework around platforms is covered in our guide to whether crypto is legal in Australia.

The classification matters because CGT assets are taxed on disposal, not while you hold them. Prices can double in a year and no tax arises until a CGT event occurs.

One distinction sits above everything else: investor versus trader. Most individuals are investors, holding crypto on capital account and taxed under the CGT rules described here. A person carrying on a business of trading crypto is taxed differently — coins are treated as trading stock and profits as ordinary income, with no CGT discount. The boundary depends on volume, organisation, and profit-making intention, and it is a question for a registered tax agent, not a website. Everything below describes the investor treatment.

What triggers a CGT event

A CGT event is the moment tax law takes a snapshot of your position. For crypto, the list is longer than most people expect. The single most common error the ATO sees is assuming tax only applies when crypto is converted back to Australian dollars.

Transaction	CGT event?	What the ATO measures
Selling crypto for AUD	Yes	Sale proceeds minus cost base
Swapping one crypto for another	Yes	AUD market value of the asset received
Spending crypto on goods or services	Yes	AUD market value of what you bought
Gifting crypto to another person	Yes	AUD market value on the date of the gift
Wrapping or unwrapping a token	Yes	Market value at the time of exchange
Depositing into or withdrawing from a DeFi liquidity pool	Yes	Market value of what you receive in return
Some DeFi lending and borrowing arrangements	Often	Depends on whether beneficial ownership changes
Buying crypto with AUD	No	Sets your cost base (price plus fees)
Transferring between your own wallets	No	Ownership unchanged — but any crypto used to pay the network fee is itself disposed of
Holding through price movements	No	Unrealised gains are not taxed

Two points deserve emphasis. First, crypto-to-crypto swaps are disposals: trading bitcoin for ether realises any gain on the bitcoin at that moment, in AUD terms, even though no dollars touched your bank account. Second, the ATO’s guidance on decentralised finance and wrapping crypto, published in November 2023, confirms that many DeFi interactions — providing liquidity, wrapping ETH into wETH, lending where ownership transfers — each trigger their own CGT event. Active DeFi users can accumulate hundreds of events in a year without ever cashing out.

The mechanics of calculating each gain — cost base elements, capital proceeds, the order in which losses apply — are covered in detail in our guide to capital gains tax on crypto.

Crypto earnings taxed as ordinary income

Not everything is a capital gain. Where crypto arrives as a reward rather than through purchase, the ATO taxes it as ordinary income at its AUD market value on the day you receive it — the same way interest or salary is taxed, with no CGT discount available.

Receipt	Tax treatment on receipt	Later disposal
Staking rewards	Ordinary income at market value	CGT event; cost base equals the value already taxed
Airdrop of an established token	Ordinary income at market value	CGT event; cost base equals the value already taxed
Initial allocation airdrop (new token, nothing paid)	Not income	CGT event with a cost base of zero
DeFi periodic rewards and yields	Ordinary income at market value	CGT event; cost base equals the value already taxed
Payment for work in crypto	Ordinary income (salary or business income)	CGT event from that value

This creates the double-entry pattern that catches stakers out: each reward is income when it lands, and the same coins later generate a capital gain or loss when sold, measured against the value you already declared. The ATO’s page on staking rewards and airdrops sets out both legs.

Income from these sources is assessable in the year of receipt even if the tokens are illiquid or have since fallen in value — a genuine risk for holders of reward tokens that collapse before sale.

Chain splits and forked coins

A chain split — such as Bitcoin Cash emerging from Bitcoin in 2017 — is treated differently from an airdrop. For an investor, the new coins are not income when received and no capital gain arises at the time of the split. Instead, the new asset takes a cost base of zero, so the entire proceeds become a capital gain when you eventually dispose of it.

The 12-month discount clock for the new asset starts at the split, not when you acquired the original coins. The ATO’s guidance on crypto chain splits confirms both points.

The 50% CGT discount

The CGT discount is the most valuable concession available to crypto investors, and the rules are mechanical:

Taxpayer	Discount on assets held > 12 months
Individuals (resident)	50%
Complying super funds, including SMSFs	33⅓%
Companies	Nil

To qualify, you must have held the asset for more than 12 months, excluding both the acquisition day and the disposal day. The discount applies after capital losses have been deducted from gains — losses first, discount second, which affects how much discount survives in a mixed year.

Because every swap is a disposal and a fresh acquisition, frequent traders rarely accumulate 12 months of holding on any parcel. The discount structurally favours long-term holders. For SMSF trustees, the interaction between the one-third discount, the 15 per cent accumulation-phase tax rate and audit requirements is covered in our guide to SMSF crypto rules, tax and audit.

Structuring decisions around the discount — timing, asset selection between parcels, and what the law does and does not permit — are examined in our guide to legal ways to reduce crypto tax.

FY2025-26 tax rates: what your gain is actually taxed at

There is no separate crypto tax rate. Your net capital gain (after losses and any discount) is added to your other taxable income and the total is taxed at resident marginal rates. These are the FY2025-26 rates, verified June 2026:

Taxable income	Tax on this income
$0 – $18,200	Nil
$18,201 – $45,000	16c for each $1 over $18,200
$45,001 – $135,000	$4,288 plus 30c for each $1 over $45,000
$135,001 – $190,000	$31,288 plus 37c for each $1 over $135,000
$190,001 and over	$51,638 plus 45c for each $1 over $190,000

These figures exclude the 2 per cent Medicare levy, which most taxpayers also pay. Under legislation already passed, the 16 per cent rate falls to 15 per cent from 1 July 2026 and to 14 per cent from 1 July 2027 — relevant if you are weighing the timing of a disposal either side of 30 June.

A worked example: an investor earning $90,000 in salary realises a $20,000 gain on bitcoin held for two years. The 50 per cent discount reduces the taxable gain to $10,000, which is taxed in the 30 per cent bracket plus Medicare levy — roughly $3,200 of tax. The same gain realised inside 12 months would attract roughly $6,400. Our crypto tax calculator runs this arithmetic for your own figures.

Capital losses and the wash-sale warning

Crypto’s volatility cuts both ways, and the loss rules are strict but useful:

Capital losses offset capital gains in the same year — including gains on shares or property, not just crypto.
Unused losses carry forward indefinitely to offset future capital gains.
Losses can never offset salary, business or other ordinary income.
Losses on personal use assets are disregarded entirely.

Lost or stolen crypto — a failed exchange, a compromised wallet — may support a capital loss claim, but the ATO requires evidence: wallet addresses, acquisition records and documentation of the loss itself.

The major trap is the wash sale. Selling an asset shortly before 30 June to crystallise a loss, then promptly rebuying the same or a substantially similar asset, is the arrangement described in the ATO’s Taxpayer Alert TA 2008/7. Where the dominant purpose is generating a tax loss while keeping economic exposure, the Commissioner can apply Part IVA anti-avoidance provisions to cancel the loss, with penalties of up to 50 per cent of the tax avoided. The ATO has stated publicly that its data analytics identify wash sales using exchange and registry data. Genuine portfolio changes are not caught; sell-and-rebuy-Tuesday is the pattern under scrutiny.

The personal use asset exemption is narrower than you think

The most persistent myth in Australian crypto tax is that holdings under $10,000 are tax-free. The actual rule, set out on the ATO’s personal use asset page, is far narrower.

Crypto is a personal use asset only if it is kept or used mainly to purchase items for personal use or consumption — buying crypto on Friday to pay for a gaming subscription on Saturday is the archetype. Where it qualifies and cost $10,000 or less to acquire, the capital gain is disregarded.

What disqualifies most holders:

Holding crypto for any meaningful period before spending it points to investment, not personal use.
Using only a small proportion of a holding to buy goods does not make the whole holding a personal use asset.
The longer crypto is held, the less likely the exemption applies — the ATO assesses the purpose at acquisition and over the holding period.
Capital losses on personal use assets are disregarded, so the exemption cannot be used to claim losses either.

For an investor who bought and held, the exemption is effectively unavailable regardless of portfolio size.

ATO data matching: the ATO already has your exchange records

Assume the ATO can see your exchange activity. Its crypto assets data-matching program collects account identification and transaction data from Australian designated service providers, covering the 2014-15 through 2025-26 financial years. The key facts, verified June 2026:

The ATO expects records on approximately 700,000 to 1,200,000 individuals and entities each financial year.
Data is collected annually between April and July and matched against lodged returns to identify unreported disposals and income.
Collected data is retained for seven years — longer than the five years applying to most ATO data programs.
Provider names are not published, so no exchange can be assumed to be outside the program.

Because AUSTRAC-registered exchanges must verify customer identity under AML/CTF law, exchange accounts are tied to verified individuals — registration is an anti-money-laundering obligation, not an endorsement, but it does mean the data trail is complete. Separately, the Corporations Amendment (Digital Assets Framework) Act 2026 will require digital asset platforms to hold an AFSL from 9 April 2027, further formalising the sector.

In practice, the question is not whether the ATO knows, but whether your return matches what it knows. Where past years are wrong, a voluntary disclosure through a registered tax agent before ATO contact substantially reduces penalties.

Record-keeping requirements

The ATO’s crypto record-keeping rules require records for every asset and every transaction, kept for at least five years after you prepared or obtained them, or after the transaction completed — whichever is later. For each transaction you need:

The date of the transaction.
The AUD market value at the time (from a reputable exchange or price source).
What the transaction was for, and the other party — a wallet address is sufficient.
Receipts for purchases, transfers and disposals, plus exchange records and statements.
Records of agent, accountant, legal and software costs that form part of your cost base.

Because exchanges fail and accounts close, exporting full transaction history regularly is the practical safeguard — records cannot always be recreated later. Most investors with more than a handful of trades use dedicated software to maintain an AUD-denominated ledger across exchanges and wallets; we compare the main options in our crypto tax software comparison. We may earn a commission from some partners featured there; it does not change the published figures.

How to report crypto in your tax return

Capital gains and losses are reported in the capital gains section of your return (in myTax, the capital gains or losses question, which includes a crypto asset category), and income from staking, airdrops and DeFi rewards is reported as other income. The full walkthrough — labels, totals, and how discount gains are presented — is in our step-by-step guide to declaring crypto on your tax return.

Self-preparers must lodge by 31 October 2026 for FY2025-26. Lodging through a registered tax agent generally extends the deadline, provided you are on their books before 31 October. For complex positions — DeFi, trader-versus-investor questions, prior-year corrections — a crypto-literate agent registered with the Tax Practitioners Board is the appropriate source of personal advice; our directory of crypto tax accountants explains what to look for. This guide is general information and cannot determine any individual’s liability.

Before 30 June: an EOFY records checklist

The financial year ends on Tuesday 30 June 2026. Factual housekeeping that makes lodgement accurate:

Export transaction histories from every exchange and wallet used this year — including closed accounts — while access still exists.
Reconcile wallet-to-wallet transfers so your software does not misread them as disposals, and capture network fees paid in crypto, which are disposals.
Value income events in AUD at receipt: staking rewards, airdrops and DeFi yields received up to 30 June, at the market value on each date.
Confirm carried-forward capital losses from prior-year notices of assessment — they reduce this year’s gains before the discount applies.
Check holding periods: the CGT event date for a disposal is when the transaction occurs, not settlement, so disposals either side of 30 June fall into different years and different discount positions.
Note the wash-sale rule before any late-June repositioning: TA 2008/7 applies to loss sales followed by prompt reacquisition.
Engage a registered tax agent before 31 October 2026 if your affairs are complex — agent lodgement programs only cover clients registered by that date.

Tax is one pillar of holding crypto well in Australia; storage and platform selection are the others. Our guides to hardware wallets available in Australia and how to buy crypto in Australia cover the practical side, and the broader tax hub collects every guide in this series.

Common questions

Frequently asked questions

Is crypto taxed in Australia?

Yes. The ATO treats crypto assets as capital gains tax (CGT) assets, not as money. Selling, swapping, spending or gifting crypto triggers a CGT event, and any net capital gain is added to your assessable income and taxed at your marginal rate. Staking rewards, most airdrops and DeFi yields are taxed separately as ordinary income at their market value when you receive them.

How much tax do I pay on crypto in Australia?

There is no separate crypto tax rate. Your net capital gain is added to your taxable income and taxed at FY2025-26 marginal rates, which run from 16 per cent to 45 per cent plus the 2 per cent Medicare levy. Individuals who hold a crypto asset for more than 12 months before disposal can generally apply a 50 per cent CGT discount to the gain.

Does the ATO know about my crypto?

In most cases, yes. The ATO's crypto asset data-matching program collects account and transaction data from Australian designated service providers, covering the 2014-15 to 2025-26 financial years. The ATO expects records on roughly 700,000 to 1,200,000 individuals and entities each year, matched against tax returns to find unreported disposals. Exchanges verify identity under AUSTRAC rules, so accounts are linked to you.

Is swapping one crypto for another taxable in Australia?

Yes. The ATO treats a crypto-to-crypto swap as a disposal of the asset you give up, even though you never receive Australian dollars. Your capital proceeds are the market value in AUD of the asset you receive at the time of the swap. The new asset starts its own cost base at that value, and its 12-month discount clock restarts.

Can I claim crypto losses on my tax return?

Capital losses on crypto can offset capital gains in the same year, and unused losses carry forward indefinitely to future years. They cannot offset salary or other ordinary income. The ATO warns against wash sales — selling to crystallise a loss and quickly rebuying the same asset — and can cancel losses under Part IVA anti-avoidance rules, with penalties of up to 50 per cent of the tax avoided.

Is crypto under $10,000 tax-free in Australia?

No, this is a common myth. The $10,000 figure relates to the personal use asset exemption, which only applies where crypto was acquired and used within a short period to buy goods or services for personal consumption. Crypto held for any period as an investment does not qualify, regardless of the amount. Capital losses on personal use assets are also disregarded entirely.

What happens if I don't declare crypto to the ATO?

The ATO matches exchange data against lodged returns and can amend assessments, charge interest and apply penalties for omitted income or gains. Data from its crypto program is retained for seven years. Taxpayers who make a voluntary disclosure before the ATO contacts them generally receive significant penalty reductions, so amending an earlier return through a registered tax agent is the standard corrective path.

Sources & further reading