Australia Opens Consultation on New Crypto Tax Reporting Laws

Australian crypto platforms would have to report their customers’ trades and transfers to the Australian Taxation Office under draft laws Treasury released for consultation on Thursday.

The Treasury Laws Amendment Bill 2026: Tax Information Reporting would also bring the OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework, known as CARF, into Australian law. The bill delivers a measure announced in the 2025–26 Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook. Submissions on the bill close on 28 October.

CARF lets tax authorities swap information about crypto holdings across borders. Treasury’s explanatory materials say crypto can be held and moved without traditional financial intermediaries. That leaves the ATO without full visibility of transactions, income or where holdings sit.

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Reporting From July 2027

The domestic regime covers any business providing a registrable virtual asset service under Australia’s anti-money laundering laws. That includes exchanging crypto for money or other crypto, safekeeping and making transfers on customers’ instructions.

Those businesses would report each exchange or transfer made by or for an Australian resident. Transfers between providers, between users and to external wallets are all covered, according to the explanatory materials.

Treasury expects reports to name each user and give their address, ABN and bank account details. Every transaction would carry the asset’s name, the date and time, its value in Australian dollars and a transaction ID.

The regime applies from 1 July 2027. Its reports are intended to run quarterly, each due 31 days after the period ends. That information would fall under the Privacy Act and the ATO’s tax secrecy rules.

Global Exchange in 2028

Under CARF, crypto service providers would collect information for the 2027 calendar year and file their first reports in 2028. The government expects Australia’s first exchange with foreign tax authorities to follow that year.

Australia joined 47 other jurisdictions in November 2023 in signalling it would adopt CARF by 2027. CARF reporting runs through centralised exchanges, brokers and some wallet providers. Chainalysis found in August that only 14% of on-chain taxable activity falls within the framework, leaving decentralised exchange trades and peer-to-peer transfers outside those intermediaries.

The new regime builds on the ATO’s crypto data-matching programme. Under it, the ATO collects records on about 700,000 to 1.2 million individuals and entities a year from crypto service providers. Treasury says that data varies between providers and leaves out holdings with foreign platforms.

The bill also updates the Common Reporting Standard, which Australia has applied since 2016. The revised standard takes effect on 1 January 2027 and extends to e-money products, central bank digital currencies and derivatives that reference crypto. Back in May, both crypto reporting regimes were still awaiting legislation as the government outlined a wider tax overhaul.

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