Crypto income report

Not all crypto tax comes from selling. Crypto you earn, through staking, mining, airdrops, rewards, lending, or as payment, is usually taxed as income when you receive it. CryptaTax's income report captures all of it, valued correctly.

General information, not tax advice. How crypto income is taxed depends on your country, see your country guide.

What's in the report

For each income event, the report shows:

• the type (staking, mining, airdrop, reward, lending, or payment)
• the date received and the asset
• the value at receipt in your local currency, which is what most countries tax as income, and what becomes the cost basis for capital gains when you later sell those coins.

Getting the receipt-day value right matters twice: it sets your income figure now, and your gain or loss later. → Crypto tax guides →

How you use it

Crypto income usually goes on a different part of your return from capital gains, for example, Schedule 1 in the US, or the miscellaneous income section of the SA100 in the UK. The income report gives you those totals; your country guide explains where they go. → Crypto tax by country →

Generate it with CryptaTax

Import your exchanges and wallets, and CryptaTax identifies your income events, values each one at the time you received it, and produces the income report, separate from your capital gains, with the detail behind every figure.

→ Import your exchanges & wallets →

Why crypto income is its own kind of tax

Most people associate crypto tax with selling at a profit, but a large share of crypto activity is taxed long before anything is sold. When you earn crypto rather than buy it, most countries treat the coins you receive as income at the moment they land in your wallet, valued in your local currency on that day. This is a fundamentally different event from a capital gain: there is no purchase to compare against, because the receipt itself is the taxable moment. The income report exists to capture exactly this stream, which is easy to overlook precisely because no sale ever takes place.

The kinds of activity that produce crypto income are broader than many filers realise. Staking rewards, mining rewards, airdrops, lending and yield rewards, referral or promotional bonuses, and crypto received as payment for work or goods all generally count. What unites them is that value arrived without you spending anything to get it, and that value is taxable when it arrives. See the crypto income guide → for how these categories are typically treated.

The receipt-day value does double duty

The single most important number in the whole report is the value at receipt, and it matters twice over. First, it is your taxable income now: most countries tax the market value of earned crypto on the day it is received. Second, that same figure becomes the cost basis of those specific coins for capital gains purposes, so when you later sell or swap them, your gain is measured from the receipt-day value, not from zero.

Getting it wrong therefore causes two errors, not one. Undervalue a reward at receipt and you understate income today and overstate the gain when you eventually sell. Overvalue it and you overpay now. Because rewards often arrive in small, frequent amounts at constantly moving prices, valuing each one accurately by hand is genuinely hard, which is why a tool that timestamps and prices each receipt is worth far more here than it first appears. The downstream effect on your capital gains report → is direct: the income report's receipt values are the cost basis the gains report starts from.

How the income figures are produced

A reliable income report depends on the same disciplined handling of your full history that any crypto reporting does, but with its own twist: the emphasis is on identifying receipts correctly and pricing them at the right moment.

• Complete history across every wallet and account. Rewards land in many places, staking on one platform, an airdrop to a self-custody wallet, yield on another. Miss a venue and you miss the income.
• Correct classification of each receipt. A staking reward, an airdrop, and an internal transfer all look like an incoming amount on-chain. Only the genuine income events should be valued as income; a transfer of your own coins is not income at all.
• Accurate receipt-day pricing. Each income event is valued in your local currency at the time it arrived, using a consistent price source, so the figure is defensible.
• A clean handoff to cost basis. Each valued receipt is recorded as the cost basis of those exact coins, ready for the gains side, so the two reports agree rather than contradict each other.

How income reporting relates to your other reports

Crypto income and crypto capital gains are taxed under different rules and usually land on different parts of a return, income in the income section, gains in the capital gains pages. The income report and the capital gains report → are deliberately kept separate for this reason, but they are joined at the hip: the value you declare as income becomes the cost basis the gains report uses later. Keeping them distinct, yet consistent, is what stops the same value being taxed twice or falling through the cracks. Where each total goes on the form depends on your country, see the current form and your country's guidance, so browse crypto tax by country → for the right destination.

Common mistakes with crypto income

• Only counting income when you sell the rewards. The taxable moment is usually receipt, not the later sale. Waiting until you cash out misstates which year the income belongs to.
• Treating airdrops as free. An airdrop you can access and control is generally income at its value on receipt, even though it cost you nothing.
• Missing small, frequent rewards. Daily or per-block staking payouts are easy to ignore individually but material in aggregate over a year.
• Confusing a transfer with income. Moving your own coins between wallets is not income; if records are not matched, an internal transfer can be wrongly counted as an earned receipt.
• Forgetting that receipt value sets future basis. Filers who record income but not its cost-basis effect end up over-taxed when they later sell the same coins.
• Reconstructing it after the fact. Reward histories on platforms that have changed or closed are hard to rebuild later, capture them as they happen.

Record-keeping for crypto income

For every income event, keep the date and time of receipt, the asset and amount received, the source or activity that produced it, and the local-currency value on the day it arrived. Hold onto platform statements and reward histories, and keep them organised by source. Because each receipt also becomes a cost-basis lot, good income records double as the foundation of accurate capital gains later, so the effort pays off twice. Learn more about how basis works at cost basis →.

Amending a prior year

Unreported income from a past year is one of the more common things filers discover after the fact, because rewards accrue quietly. If you find you missed staking, mining, or airdrop income in an earlier year, the correct course is to amend rather than leave it. The procedure and the time limit for amending depend on your country, check the current form and your country's guidance for those specifics. From a crypto standpoint, the key is to rebuild the affected year from a complete history so the corrected income figures, and the cost basis they set, are right. Re-running your full history in CryptaTax for that year produces the revised income detail directly.

How CryptaTax generates your income report

CryptaTax takes the guesswork out of the income side. Connect your exchanges and wallets, and it ingests your full history, distinguishes genuine income receipts from internal transfers, classifies each one by type, and values it in your local currency at the moment it arrived. It then records that value as the cost basis of those coins, so the income report and the capital gains report stay consistent with each other. Every figure is traceable back to the receipt that produced it. Connect your accounts at integrations →.

Handling frequent, small rewards without losing accuracy

A practical challenge unique to crypto income is volume. Where traditional income tends to arrive in a handful of clear payments, staking and yield rewards can land many times a day, in tiny amounts, at a price that never stops moving. Each of those receipts is, in principle, a separately valued income event, and a separately created cost-basis lot for later. Trying to value hundreds or thousands of micro-receipts by hand is not just tedious; it is where accuracy quietly breaks down, because people round, batch, or simply skip the small ones.

The right approach is to treat each receipt on its own terms, valued at the price prevailing when it actually arrived, and recorded with a timestamp so the figure is defensible. Done properly, the sum of those many small values is your income for the year, and each one seeds a basis lot that flows through to your capital gains report → when the coins are later sold. CryptaTax automates precisely this: it captures each reward as a discrete, timestamped, priced event rather than a rounded monthly lump, so neither your income figure nor your future cost basis is distorted by the sheer number of receipts. The treatment that applies to your specific rewards should always be checked against the current guidance for your country.

More questions about crypto income

Is an airdrop taxable if I never asked for it?

In many countries an airdrop you can access and control is treated as income at its value on the day you receive it, regardless of whether you sought it out. The treatment can vary with the circumstances of the airdrop, so check the current guidance for your country or a tax professional for anything unusual.

When exactly is staking income taxed?

Most commonly at the point the rewards are received and you have control over them, valued at that day's market price. The precise timing rules differ by country, so refer to your country guide and current guidance for the specifics rather than assuming a single global rule.

What happens to the coins after I report them as income?

They carry a cost basis equal to the value you declared as income. When you later sell, swap, or spend them, your capital gain or loss is measured from that basis, which is why the income report and the capital gains report have to agree on the receipt-day value.

Does CryptaTax keep income and gains apart automatically?

Yes. It produces the income report and the capital gains report as separate outputs, so each total lands in the right section of your return, while keeping the receipt values consistent across both so nothing is double-counted or lost.

Keeping your income report and gains in step

An income report and a gain/loss report are two halves of the same picture: the value you record as income on receipt becomes the cost basis used when you later dispose of those coins. Keep them in step and your numbers reconcile; let them drift and you either pay tax twice on the same amount or understate a gain. The fix is one reconciled source of truth for every wallet and exchange, which is exactly what CryptaTax builds before producing either report. See the gain/loss report → and crypto tax by country → for how the two fit together.