Crypto Tax in Australia: The Plain-English Guide

🪙 The two tax buckets: CGT vs ordinary income🔗

Before anything else, work out which bucket your crypto falls into, because the rules and the tax bill differ.

If you bought crypto hoping it would go up in value, it's almost certainly a CGT asset. If you're earning crypto as a reward or payment, that's ordinary income first, and then a CGT asset from the moment you receive it.

⚡ What actually triggers tax🔗

Taxable events include selling crypto for AUD, swapping crypto-to-crypto (the ATO treats it as disposing of the first asset and acquiring the second, even without converting to AUD), paying for goods or services with crypto, and gifting crypto to someone else.

Not taxable: transferring crypto between wallets you own and control, with no change in beneficial ownership, and simply buying crypto with AUD, which just sets your cost base.

For the specifics on swaps, see our crypto-to-crypto swaps guide, and for spending crypto on personal purchases, our $10,000 personal use asset rule guide.

🌾 Staking and mining🔗

Staking rewards are ordinary income at the AUD market value on the day you receive them, reported like salary or bank interest. That value also becomes your cost base for those tokens, so when you later sell them, a second, separate CGT event applies to any gain or loss since receipt. Full detail in our staking tax guide.

Mining depends on scale. Hobby mining generally results in a CGT asset at acquisition. Business-scale mining, run with commercial intent and organisation, is taxed as ordinary income when coins are mined, with deductions available for equipment and electricity. If you're unsure which applies, get advice from a registered tax agent.

🎯 The 50% CGT discount🔗

Hold a crypto asset for at least 12 months before disposing of it and you can reduce your capital gain by 50%, the single most powerful, completely legal tax strategy available to Australian crypto investors.

The discount is available to individuals and trusts, not companies. Complying super funds get a 33.33% discount instead of 50%. The 12-month clock starts the day after you acquire the asset and ends the day before you dispose of it.

🔍 The ATO's data matching program🔗

The ATO runs a formal Crypto Assets Data Matching Program. Australian exchanges are required to hand over customer data, which the ATO cross-references against tax returns to identify undeclared activity. The "it's crypto, it's anonymous" assumption is wrong, if you've used an Australian exchange and provided ID as required, the ATO has your data. More detail in our data matching deep-dive.

🗂️ Record-keeping🔗

Keep records for every crypto transaction, at least 5 years from when you dispose of the asset (or 5 years from when the record was made, whichever is later). For each transaction, record the date, the AUD value at the time, the type of transaction, the number of units, and the exchange or wallet used.

🎯 The essential: No records means no proof of your cost base. Without one, the ATO may assess your entire proceeds as a gain rather than a modest profit.

⚠️ Common mistakes🔗

• Thinking crypto-to-crypto swaps aren't taxable, they are, always
• Forgetting staking rewards are income, not "free money"
• Not keeping records because "it's crypto"
• Assuming losses don't need to be reported, they do, and they carry forward
• Waiting until tax time to reconstruct a year of trading from memory

If you run a side hustle alongside crypto, or you're not sure whether your activity counts as a business, our side hustle tax guide covers the same declare-everything principle.

❓ Frequently asked questions🔗