Updated Checked by the Tax-Services.ca editorial team How we check
Selling, swapping or spending a coin is a disposition, and the CRA taxes half of a capital gain. That holds for your 2026 return and for 2027. A trader running a business reports the whole profit. A $5,000 gain adds $2,500 to your income. Keep a Canadian dollar record of every transaction for six years.
This page covers valuing coins in Canadian dollars and the records and tax documents to keep. For the line by line return, read how to report crypto on your 2026 return. For the cost of coins bought in several lots, see crypto adjusted cost base.
What counts as a taxable crypto event?
Selling for dollars is the obvious one. Trading one coin for another counts too, and so does paying for a coffee or a laptop with crypto, which the CRA treats as a barter deal. Giving crypto away as a gift or donation is also a disposition. Moving coins between wallets you own is not, since ownership does not change. Buying and holding creates no tax.
| What you do | Taxable event? |
|---|---|
| Buy with dollars and hold | No |
| Sell for Canadian dollars | Yes |
| Swap one coin for another | Yes |
| Pay for goods or services with coin | Yes, as barter |
| Gift or donate coin | Yes |
| Move coin between your own wallets | No |
The swap is the one that surprises people. Say you paid $2,000 for a coin and a year later trade it for another coin worth $3,000. You never touched a dollar, but you have a $1,000 gain that day, and $500 of it is taxable. The cost of the new coin is the $3,000 value you just used. Our guide to crypto to crypto swaps prices both sides in more detail.
Is crypto a capital gain or business income?
It depends on how you act. The CRA lists how often you trade, how long you hold, your knowledge of the markets, the time you spend, borrowing to buy and advertising that you buy and sell. Most people who buy now and sell later have a capital gain, and half of it is added to income. Frequent, organized trading can be business income, taxed in full. There is no magic number of trades, and the CRA decides case by case.
For 2026 the CRA crypto pages still say half. The Budget 2026 tax measures we read propose no change to the one half inclusion rate, so we use 50% for 2026 and 2027, and we will change it if that changes.
How do you value a coin in Canadian dollars?
Every transaction needs a Canadian dollar value, the fair market value on the day it happened. The CRA accepts a reasonable method if you use it the same way every year, such as the rate from your broker or an average across busy exchanges. Each coin is valued on its own. Write down the method you used so you can repeat it next year. The value you use for a swap or a purchase also becomes the cost of what you received.
What does a $5,000 crypto gain cost in Ontario?
Say you earn $80,000 in Ontario and buy a coin for $10,000. You later sell it for $15,000. The capital gains tax calculator shows $2,500 landing on your income and extra tax of $741.25, which is 14.8% of the gain. You keep $4,258.75. If your other income is only $40,000, the same gain costs $476.25.
Now try it as a business. We ran an extra $5,000 of self-employment income on top of $80,000 of pay in the income tax calculator, and income tax rose by $1,437.45. That leaves out the CPP you would owe on self-employed earnings, which the tool does not add. The gap between $741.25 and $1,437.45 is why the capital versus business question matters. These figures use 2026 federal and Ontario data. Tax rates for 2027 will be published later, so rerun the calculators then.
You must include half of your capital gains (known as taxable capital gains) in your income for the year.
Reporting income from crypto-asset transactions, canada.ca
Which records and tax documents do you need?
The CRA does not take a transaction history with your return, but you must be able to produce one. Its books and records page asks for the date of each transaction, what it was and the other party (even if only a wallet address), the addresses of every wallet you use, and your opening and closing balances with the cost of the opening balance. Receipts for accounting, legal and software costs belong in the file too.
Keep everything for six years after the last tax year it relates to. Download your history from every exchange and app at regular intervals while you still have access, since a platform can close or drop old data. A year end statement from a platform is a starting point, not a finished tax document. Check it for missing wallets, missing fees and transfers that look like sales. The general record keeping rules apply as well.
How do you report crypto on your 2026 return?
List each capital disposition on Schedule 3. The taxable half of the net gain goes to line 12700 of the T1. If the CRA sees a business, the profit is business income instead and the full amount is taxed. A 2026 return is due April 30, 2027, or June 15, 2027 for self-employed filers, though any balance is still due April 30. Our step by step page on how to report crypto on your 2026 tax return has a worked table. Budget 2026 proposes a May 15 date, but only from the 2027 tax year, and it is a proposal until it becomes law.
What changes for crypto in 2027?
The basic rules above do not change in 2027. Two proposals are worth watching. Bill C-31 would bring in platform reporting under the OECD Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework, which means exchanges and similar providers would report user details to the CRA. When we checked on November 12, 2026 the bill had not received royal assent, and we have not confirmed the start dates from the bill text, so read our page on CARF in Canada for the current status. Budget 2026 also proposes stronger penalties tied to that reporting for 2028 and later years.
The second is the T1135 foreign property form. Budget 2026 proposes raising the filing threshold from $100,000 to $200,000 for years ending after 2026. Whether coins on a foreign platform count as foreign property is not settled on a CRA page we could read, so see crypto and the T1135.
Where do people trip up?
- Forgetting swaps. Every trade between two coins is a sale and a purchase at once, and each needs a dollar value.
- Using only the one exchange they use most. Pull history from every exchange and wallet.
- Expecting a capital loss to offset salary. Half of a capital loss only cancels taxable capital gains, and unused losses carry back three years or forward without limit. See crypto capital losses.
- Ignoring mining, staking and reward income. The CRA says mining is generally a business and staking rewards on a centralized exchange are generally income when credited. See the guides on mining and staking.
- Mixing up the average cost of coins bought at different prices. The adjusted cost base guide shows a worked example.
Once you know the gain, the marginal tax rate calculator shows what the next dollar of each kind of income costs, and the tax installments calculator helps if you will owe on top of a payroll job. The full picture is on our crypto tax in Canada hub.
Sources and what we checked
Checked in November 2026 against the CRA pages Reporting income from crypto-asset transactions (page dated December 2, 2025), books and records, valuing crypto-assets and crypto-assets and your tax obligations, plus the Budget 2026 tax measures and Bill C-31 on LEGISinfo. Example figures come from our calculators on 2026 federal and Ontario data. This page is general information. No level of government runs or endorses this site.
Frequently asked questions
Is buying crypto taxable in Canada?
No. Buying with dollars and holding creates no tax. Tax starts when you sell, swap, spend or give the coin away, because each of those is a disposition and needs a value in Canadian dollars on the day it happens.
Is swapping one coin for another a taxable event?
Yes. The CRA treats a trade for another crypto-asset as a disposition. You work out the gain or loss using the Canadian dollar value of what you gave up, and that same value becomes the cost of the new coin for your next sale.
How much of a crypto gain is taxed in 2026?
You report 50% of a capital gain, so a $5,000 gain adds $2,500 to your income. A trader carrying on a business reports the whole profit. We found no change to the one half rate in the Budget 2026 tax measures.
How long do I keep crypto records and tax documents?
At least six years after the end of the last tax year they relate to. Keep exchange exports, wallet addresses, opening and closing balances with cost, and notes on how you valued each coin. Export history regularly in case a platform closes.
Where do capital gains from crypto go on my return?
List each disposition on Schedule 3. If the net result is a taxable capital gain, it goes to line 12700 of the T1. Check the Schedule 3 guide for the current year, since the 2026 form was not published when we checked.
Does anything change for crypto in 2027?
The tax rules for gains stay the same as far as we can confirm. Platform reporting under Bill C-31 and a higher T1135 threshold are proposals, not law, at the time we checked. We update this page when the status changes.
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