Crypto and Tax: What You Should Be Tracking

Rules differ by country and this is not tax advice. But the record-keeping is universal, and starting late is genuinely painful.

The general principle

Most tax systems treat crypto as property rather than currency. Buying is not usually taxable. Disposing of it usually is — and disposal covers more than people expect.

Events that often count as disposal

• Selling crypto for regular money
• Trading one crypto for another — this surprises everyone. BTC to ETH is often a taxable disposal of the BTC, even though nothing reached your bank.
• Spending crypto on goods or services
• Receiving crypto as payment or reward — often taxed as income at the value on the day received

Simply holding, or moving between your own wallets, is normally not taxable. Moving between your own wallets is not a disposal, though it can look like one in exported data if you do not label it.

What to record, from today

For every transaction: date and time, what you bought or sold, the amount, the value in your local currency at that moment, the fee, and which platform.

That last one matters. Reconstructing three years across four platforms, two of which have since shut down, is a genuinely awful exercise.

Practical habits

• Export your history quarterly. Platforms close, lose data, or limit how far back you can export.
• Label transfers between your own wallets as they happen. Later you will not remember.
• Record the local-currency value at the time, not today's.
• Keep P2P bank statements. If tax authorities ask about deposits, you want the matching order.
• Consider portfolio tracking software once you pass a few dozen transactions a year.

The honest advice

If the amounts are meaningful, pay an accountant who has handled crypto before. It costs less than getting it wrong, and considerably less than reconstructing years of history under pressure.