Crypto capital gains report

CryptaTax turns your full transaction history into a clear capital gains report, every disposal, with its cost basis, proceeds, and resulting gain or loss, totalled and ready for your country's tax return.

General information, not tax advice. How gains are taxed depends on your country, see your country guide.

What's in the report

For every taxable disposal, selling for fiat, swapping one coin for another, or spending crypto, the report shows:

• the asset, date acquired, and date disposed
• the proceeds and the cost basis (using your country's method)
• the gain or loss, split into short-term and long-term where your country distinguishes them
• and the totals for the year.

It applies the right cost-basis method for where you file, for example, FIFO, UK Section 104 pooling, or a proportional method, automatically, so the numbers match your local rules rather than a method you have to pick by hand. → Crypto tax by country →

How you use it

• File it as the basis of your return, or hand it to your accountant.
• Map it to your country's form, for the US that's Schedule D (with Form 8949 detail); for the UK, the SA108 Capital Gains Summary; elsewhere, your local capital gains pages. → Schedule D → · SA108 →

Generate it with CryptaTax

Import your exchanges and wallets, and CryptaTax matches every disposal to the right acquisition lots, applies your country's cost-basis method, and produces the report with the underlying detail behind every figure.

→ Import your exchanges & wallets →

What a capital gains report is really for

A capital gains report answers one deceptively simple question: across everything you disposed of this year, did you make a gain or a loss, and how much? It exists because tax authorities tax the gain on an asset, the difference between what you got for it and what it cost you, not the headline value of the sale. For crypto, where a single active year can contain thousands of disposals spread across exchanges and wallets, computing that net figure by hand is impractical. The report is the structured, auditable bridge between a messy transaction history and a single set of numbers your return can use.

Almost anyone who did more than buy and hold needs one. A disposal is broader than a sale to fiat: swapping one token for another, spending crypto, and paying fees in crypto are all disposals, each with a cost basis and a market value at the moment it happens. Buying and holding, or moving your own coins between your wallets, are not disposals. Earned crypto, staking, rewards, airdrops, is a separate income matter, captured in the income report →, not here.

How the gain on each disposal is produced

Behind the tidy totals is a chain of decisions made for every single disposal, and the report is only as trustworthy as the weakest link in that chain. Three things have to be right across your whole history.

• Complete history. Every account and wallet, back to your first acquisition. A sale today can consume coins bought years ago on a platform you have since left, and the report needs that original cost.
• Matched transfers. Movements between your own wallets must be linked, so the outgoing and incoming sides are recognised as one transfer rather than counted as a sale plus a fresh purchase. Unmatched transfers are the classic source of invented gains.
• Cost basis that follows the coins. When crypto leaves an exchange for self-custody and is later sold elsewhere, its purchase price has to travel with it. Break that link and the later sale is taxed on its full proceeds with no basis to offset it.

The final piece is lot selection: when you hold several batches of the same coin bought at different prices, which batch does a disposal draw from? That choice is governed by your country's required cost-basis method, and it determines both the size of the gain and, where your country distinguishes them, whether it is short-term or long-term. The report applies the correct method for where you file automatically, rather than leaving you to pick one. Understand the mechanics at cost basis →.

How it maps onto your country's forms

The capital gains report is deliberately country-neutral: it is the underlying set of disposals and totals, from which your local form is populated. For US filers it maps onto Schedule D →, with the per-disposal detail on Form 8949. For UK filers it maps onto the SA108 Capital Gains Summary →. Elsewhere it maps onto your local capital gains pages. Because the report holds the full detail, the same underlying numbers serve whichever form your country uses, and the exact boxes and line entries should always be taken from the current form and your country's guidance. Start from crypto tax by country → or the full reports & forms hub →.

Common mistakes with capital gains

• Reporting only fiat sales. Crypto-to-crypto swaps and spending are disposals. Omitting them understates gains and clashes with the data exchanges increasingly report.
• Phantom gains from unmatched transfers. Without linked records, a move between your own wallets can be read as a sale, taxing a gain that never happened.
• Lost basis on withdrawn coins. Sell coins you moved off an exchange and, if the basis did not follow them, the gain can be computed against zero cost.
• Ignoring fees. Trading and network fees adjust proceeds and basis; dropping them quietly inflates gains over an active year.
• Skipping losses. A loss is not a non-event, reporting it can offset gains and, in many countries, carry forward. Leaving it out forfeits relief.
• Wrong holding-period split. Missing or incorrect acquisition dates push disposals onto the wrong side of any short-term/long-term divide your country applies.

Record-keeping for capital gains

Keep enough to reconstruct each disposal independently: the date and cost of every batch acquired (including fees), the date and proceeds of every disposal (less fees), and the wallet addresses and accounts involved so transfers can be matched. Organise records by venue from the outset. The painful version of this task is doing it years later, after an exchange has closed or an export is gone, so capture as you go and let the report do the matching.

Amending a prior year

If a past year turns out to be wrong, a missing exchange, an unreported swap, a transfer mistaken for a sale, correcting it is the right move, particularly as more crypto data now reaches tax authorities directly. The form to use and the window to do it in vary by country, so check the current form and your country's guidance. The crypto essential is to rebuild the affected year from a complete, transfer-matched history so the revised gains are correct. Re-running your full history in CryptaTax for that year produces the corrected disposal-by-disposal detail.

How CryptaTax generates your capital gains report

CryptaTax handles the parts that are hard to do by hand. Connect your exchanges and wallets, and it ingests your full history, links self-transfers across venues, carries cost basis with the coins, applies your country's required cost-basis method, and matches every disposal to the right acquisition lot, producing the report with the underlying transactions visible behind each gain and loss. You can trace any total back to the trades that built it, and hand the result to your accountant or file it yourself. Connect your accounts at integrations →.

Why a country-aware report beats a generic spreadsheet

It is tempting to think a capital gains calculation is just arithmetic, proceeds minus cost, summed up, and that any spreadsheet could do it. The reality is that the rules doing the work sit underneath the arithmetic, and they differ by country. The cost-basis method that decides which lot a disposal consumes, whether and how a short-term and long-term split applies, how fees adjust the figures, and how losses are treated are all jurisdiction-specific. A generic spreadsheet applies whatever method you happened to set up; a country-aware report applies the one your tax authority actually requires.

This is the difference between a number that merely looks plausible and one that matches your local rules. It also explains why the same underlying history can produce different valid totals in different countries, the disposals are the same, but the method applied to them is not. CryptaTax applies the correct method for where you file automatically, so you are not left choosing a setting whose tax consequences you may not fully appreciate. If you move country or file in more than one, this matters even more: see crypto tax by country → for how treatments diverge, and always confirm specifics against the current form and your country's guidance.

What counts as proceeds when I swap or spend crypto?

For a swap or a spend, the proceeds are generally the market value of what you gave up at the moment of the transaction, expressed in your local currency, not a later price. That value, less the cost basis of the coins disposed of, is your gain or loss. The report captures the value at the time of each disposal so the figure reflects the moment it happened rather than hindsight.

More questions about the capital gains report

Are crypto-to-crypto swaps really taxable?

In most countries, yes. Swapping one token for another is a disposal of the first asset at its market value, even though no fiat changes hands, so it produces a gain or loss just like a sale to cash. The report treats swaps as disposals for exactly this reason. Confirm the position for your country in its guidance.

Why does the report use a specific cost-basis method?

Because your country requires it. The method that decides which lot a disposal draws from is set by local rules, not personal preference, and it directly changes the gain. The report applies the correct method for where you file automatically so the figures match your local requirements rather than a method you guessed at.

Can one report cover multiple exchanges and wallets?

Yes, and it should. Capital gains are computed across all your activity combined, because coins bought in one place and sold in another are a single chain of events. The report stitches every venue together so the totals are whole and the basis follows the coins across the gaps.

What if I made an overall loss for the year?

Report it. A net capital loss can often offset gains and, in many countries, be carried forward to future years. The report totals the loss and presents the detail behind it; how the loss is applied and carried forward depends on your country, so check the current form and your country's guidance.

Why your capital gains report is only as good as its basis

Every figure in a capital gains report rests on cost basis, so a single missing or wrong basis quietly distorts the totals you file. The most common cause is coins moved in from another platform with no basis attached, followed by self-transfers mistaken for sales. Rebuilding basis accurately from your full history, rather than estimating, is the difference between a report you can defend and one you merely hope is close. CryptaTax reconciles across every account and carries basis with the coins, so the gains report adds up. See the cost basis guide →.