A tax expert’s tips on claiming crypto losses on tax, and how to work out capital gains
converting it into cash.
The big exception to this is if you use cryptocurrency as actual currency, to buy goods for personal use – such as a meal, concert ticket or white goods for your home. If you use crypto to buy a personal use asset for less than A$10,000, you can usually disregard the capital gain. This is known as the personal use exemption.
However, there are rules around this to prevent gaming the system.
The longer you’ve held crypto, the more likely the tax office is to regard it as an investment, and deny the exemption. It doesn’t provide any specific time frame but the example on its website mentions longer than six months as indicating the crypto is being held an investment.
For everything else, any crypto disposal is a taxable event, even if it doesn’t involve conversion to fiat currency (in our case, Australian dollars).
Calculating the capital gain
Let’s consider a scenario where you decided to swap one crypto asset for another.
Say you bought A$1,000 worth of the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, Ether, in late 2020 when it was trading at about A$1,000 a unit.
In early 2023, when Ether’s market value hits A$3,000, you decided to swap it all for the world’s largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (perhaps because you thought Bitcoin had better long-term prospects).
That transaction wouldn’t have involved Australian dollars – but the tax office still expects you to report the capital gain as if it had.
So what was the capital gain on that hypothetical transaction?
It is the difference between the market value (in Australian dollars) of the Ether when bought (A$1,000) and the market value of the Bitcoin acquired (A$3,000). The capital gain would be A$2,000converting it into cash.
The big exception to this is if you use cryptocurrency as actual currency, to buy goods for personal use – such as a meal, concert ticket or white goods for your home. If you use crypto to buy a personal use asset for less than A$10,000, you can usually disregard the capital gain. This is known as the personal use exemption.
However, there are rules around this to prevent gaming the system.
The longer you’ve held crypto, the more likely the tax office is to regard it as an investment, and deny the exemption. It doesn’t provide any specific time frame but the example on its website mentions longer than six months as indicating the crypto is being held an investment.
For everything else, any crypto disposal is a taxable event, even if it doesn’t involve conversion to fiat currency (in our case, Australian dollars).
Calculating the capital gain
Let’s consider a scenario where you decided to swap one crypto asset for another.
Say you bought A$1,000 worth of the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, Ether, in late 2020 when it was trading at about A$1,000 a unit.
In early 2023, when Ether’s market value hits A$3,000, you decided to swap it all for the world’s largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (perhaps because you thought Bitcoin had better long-term prospects).
That transaction wouldn’t have involved Australian dollars – but the tax office still expects you to report the capital gain as if it had.
So what was the capital gain on that hypothetical transaction?
It is the difference between the market value (in Australian dollars) of the Ether when bought (A$1,000) and the market value of the Bitcoin acquired (A$3,000). The capital gain would be A$2,000..converting it into cash.
The big exception to this is if you use cryptocurrency as actual currency, to buy goods for personal use – such as a meal, concert ticket or white goods for your home. If you use crypto to buy a personal use asset for less than A$10,000, you can usually disregard the capital gain. This is known as the personal use exemption.
However, there are rules around this to prevent gaming the system.
The longer you’ve held crypto, the more likely the tax office is to regard it as an investment, and deny the exemption. It doesn’t provide any specific time frame but the example on its website mentions longer than six months as indicating the crypto is being held an investment.
For everything else, any crypto disposal is a taxable event, even if it doesn’t involve conversion to fiat currency (in our case, Australian dollars).
Calculating the capital gain
Let’s consider a scenario where you decided to swap one crypto asset for another.
Say you bought A$1,000 worth of the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, Ether, in late 2020 when it was trading at about A$1,000 a unit.
In early 2023, when Ether’s market value hits A$3,000, you decided to swap it all for the world’s largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (perhaps because you thought Bitcoin had better long-term prospects).
That transaction wouldn’t have involved Australian dollars – but the tax office still expects you to report the capital gain as if it had.
So what was the capital gain on that hypothetical transaction?
It is the difference between the market value (in Australian dollars) of the Ether when bought (A$1,000) and the market value of the Bitcoin acquired (A$3,000). The capital gain would be A$2,000.converting it into cash.
The big exception to this is if you use cryptocurrency as actual currency, to buy goods for personal use – such as a meal, concert ticket or white goods for your home. If you use crypto to buy a personal use asset for less than A$10,000, you can usually disregard the capital gain. This is known as the personal use exemption.
However, there are rules around this to prevent gaming the system.
The longer you’ve held crypto, the more likely the tax office is to regard it as an investment, and deny the exemption. It doesn’t provide any specific time frame but the example on its website mentions longer than six months as indicating the crypto is being held an investment.
For everything else, any crypto disposal is a taxable event, even if it doesn’t involve conversion to fiat currency (in our case, Australian dollars).
Calculating the capital gain
Let’s consider a scenario where you decided to swap one crypto asset for another.
Say you bought A$1,000 worth of the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, Ether, in late 2020 when it was trading at about A$1,000 a unit.
In early 2023, when Ether’s market value hits A$3,000, you decided to swap it all for the world’s largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (perhaps because you thought Bitcoin had better long-term prospects).
That transaction wouldn’t have involved Australian dollars – but the tax office still expects you to report the capital gain as if it had.
So what was the capital gain on that hypothetical transaction?
It is the difference between the market value (in Australian dollars) of the Ether when bought (A$1,000) and the market value of the Bitcoin acquired (A$3,000). The capital gain would be A$2,000.converting it into cash.
The big exception to this is if you use cryptocurrency as actual currency, to buy goods for personal use – such as a meal, concert ticket or white goods for your home. If you use crypto to buy a personal use asset for less than A$10,000, you can usually disregard the capital gain. This is known as the personal use exemption.
However, there are rules around this to prevent gaming the system.
The longer you’ve held crypto, the more likely the tax office is to regard it as an investment, and deny the exemption. It doesn’t provide any specific time frame but the example on its website mentions longer than six months as indicating the crypto is being held an investment.
For everything else, any crypto disposal is a taxable event, even if it doesn’t involve conversion to fiat currency (in our case, Australian dollars).
Calculating the capital gain
Let’s consider a scenario where you decided to swap one crypto asset for another.
Say you bought A$1,000 worth of the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, Ether, in late 2020 when it was trading at about A$1,000 a unit.
In early 2023, when Ether’s market value hits A$3,000, you decided to swap it all for the world’s largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (perhaps because you thought Bitcoin had better long-term prospects).
That transaction wouldn’t have involved Australian dollars – but the tax office still expects you to report the capital gain as if it had.
So what was the capital gain on that hypothetical transaction?
It is the difference between the market value (in Australian dollars) of the Ether when bought (A$1,000) and the market value of the Bitcoin acquired (A$3,000). The capital gain would be A$2,000.converting it into cash.
The big exception to this is if you use cryptocurrency as actual currency, to buy goods for personal use – such as a meal, concert ticket or white goods for your home. If you use crypto to buy a personal use asset for less than A$10,000, you can usually disregard the capital gain. This is known as the personal use exemption.
However, there are rules around this to prevent gaming the system.
The longer you’ve held crypto, the more likely the tax office is to regard it as an investment, and deny the exemption. It doesn’t provide any specific time frame but the example on its website mentions longer than six months as indicating the crypto is being held an investment.
For everything else, any crypto disposal is a taxable event, even if it doesn’t involve conversion to fiat currency (in our case, Australian dollars).
Calculating the capital gain
Let’s consider a scenario where you decided to swap one crypto asset for another.
Say you bought A$1,000 worth of the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, Ether, in late 2020 when it was trading at about A$1,000 a unit.
In early 2023, when Ether’s market value hits A$3,000, you decided to swap it all for the world’s largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (perhaps because you thought Bitcoin had better long-term prospects).
That transaction wouldn’t have involved Australian dollars – but the tax office still expects you to report the capital gain as if it had.
So what was the capital gain on that hypothetical transaction?
It is the difference between the market value (in Australian dollars) of the Ether when bought (A$1,000) and the market value of the Bitcoin acquired (A$3,000). The capital gain would be A$2,000.converting it into cash.
The big exception to this is if you use cryptocurrency as actual currency, to buy goods for personal use – such as a meal, concert ticket or white goods for your home. If you use crypto to buy a personal use asset for less than A$10,000, you can usually disregard the capital gain. This is known as the personal use exemption.
However, there are rules around this to prevent gaming the system.
The longer you’ve held crypto, the more likely the tax office is to regard it as an investment, and deny the exemption. It doesn’t provide any specific time frame but the example on its website mentions longer than six months as indicating the crypto is being held an investment.
For everything else, any crypto disposal is a taxable event, even if it doesn’t involve conversion to fiat currency (in our case, Australian dollars).
Calculating the capital gain
Let’s consider a scenario where you decided to swap one crypto asset for another.
Say you bought A$1,000 worth of the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, Ether, in late 2020 when it was trading at about A$1,000 a unit.
In early 2023, when Ether’s market value hits A$3,000, you decided to swap it all for the world’s largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (perhaps because you thought Bitcoin had better long-term prospects).
That transaction wouldn’t have involved Australian dollars – but the tax office still expects you to report the capital gain as if it had.
So what was the capital gain on that hypothetical transaction?
It is the difference between the market value (in Australian dollars) of the Ether when bought (A$1,000) and the market value of the Bitcoin acquired (A$3,000). The capital gconverting it into cash.
The big exception to this is if you use cryptocurrency as actual currency, to buy goods for personal use – such as a meal, concert ticket or white goods for your home. If you use crypto to buy a personal use asset for less than A$10,000, you can usually disregard the capital gain. This is known as the personal use exemption.
However, there are rules around this to prevent gaming the system.
The longer you’ve held crypto, the more likely the tax office is to regard it as an investment, and deny the exemption. It doesn’t provide any specific time frame but the example on its website mentions longer than six months as indicating the crypto is being held an investment.
For everything else, any crypto disposal is a taxable event, even if it doesn’t involve conversion to fiat currency (in our case, Australian dollars).
Calculating the capital gain
Let’s consider a scenario where you decided to swap one crypto asset for another.
Say you bought A$1,000 worth of the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, Ether, in late 2020 when it was trading at about A$1,000 a unit.
In early 2023, when Ether’s market value hits A$3,000, you decided to swap it all for the world’s largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (perhaps because you thought Bitcoin had better long-term prospects).
That transaction wouldn’t have involved Australian dollars – but the tax office still expects you to report the capital gain as if it had.
So what was the capital gain on that hypothetical transaction?
It is the difference between the market value (in Australian dollars) of the Ether when bought (A$1,000) and the market value of the Bitcoin acquired (A$3,000). The capital gain would be A$2,000.converting it into cash.
The big exception to this is if you use cryptocurrency as actual currency, to buy goods for personal use – such as a meal, concert ticket or white goods for your home. If you use crypto to buy a personal use asset for less than A$10,000, you can usually disregard the capital gain. This is known as the personal use exemption.
However, there are rules around this to prevent gaming the system.
The longer you’ve held crypto, the more likely the tax office is to regard it as an investment, and deny the exemption. It doesn’t provide any specific time frame but the example on its website mentions longer than six months as indicating the crypto is being held an investment.
For everything else, any crypto disposal is a taxable event, even if it doesn’t involve conversion to fiat currency (in our case, Australian dollars).
Calculating the capital gain
Let’s consider a scenario where you decided to swap one crypto asset for another.
Say you bought A$1,000 worth of the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, Ether, in late 2020 when it was trading at about A$1,000 a unit.
In early 2023, when Ether’s market value hits A$3,000, you decided to swap it all for the world’s largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (perhaps because you thought Bitcoin had better long-term prospects).
That transaction wouldn’t have involved Australian dollars – but the tax office still expects you to report the capital gain as if it had.
So what was the capital gain on that hypothetical transaction?
It is the difference between the market value (in Australian dollars) of the Ether when bought (A$1,000) and the market value of the Bitcoin acquired (A$3,000). The capital gain would be A$2,000.converting it into cash.
The big exception to this is if you use cryptocurrency as actual currency, to buy goods for personal use – such as a meal, concert ticket or white goods for your home. If you use crypto to buy a personal use asset for less than A$10,000, you can usually disregard the capital gain. This is known as the personal use exemption.
However, there are rules around this to prevent gaming the system.
The longer you’ve held crypto, the more likely the tax office is to regard it as an investment, and deny the exemption. It doesn’t provide any specific time frame but the example on its website mentions longer than six months as indicating the crypto is being held an investment.
For everything else, any crypto disposal is a taxable event, even if it doesn’t involve conversion to fiat currency (in our case, Australian dollars).
Calculating the capital gain
Let’s consider a scenario where you decided to swap one crypto asset for another.
Say you bought A$1,000 worth of the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, Ether, in late 2020 when it was trading at about A$1,000 a unit.
In early 2023, when Ether’s market value hits A$3,000, you decided to swap it all for the world’s largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (perhaps because you thought Bitcoin had better long-term prospects).
That transaction wouldn’t have involved Australian dollars – but the tax office still expects you to report the capital gain as if it had.
So what was the capital gain on that hypothetical transaction?
It is the difference between the market value (in Australian dollars) of the Ether when bought (A$1,000) and the market value of the Bitcoin acquired (A$3,000). The capital gain would be A$2,000.converting it into cash.
The big exception to this is if you use cryptocurrency as actual currency, to buy goods for personal use – such as a meal, concert ticket or white goods for your home. If you use crypto to buy a personal use asset for less than A$10,000, you can usually disregard the capital gain. This is known as the personal use exemption.
However, there are rules around this to prevent gaming the system.
The longer you’ve held crypto, the more likely the tax office is to regard it as an investment, and deny the exemption. It doesn’t provide any specific time frame but the example on its website mentions longer than six months as indicating the crypto is being held an investment.
For everything else, any crypto disposal is a taxable event, even if it doesn’t involve conversion to fiat currency (in our case, Australian dollars).
Calculating the capital gain
Let’s consider a scenario where you decided to swap one crypto asset for another.
Say you bought A$1,000 worth of the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, Ether, in late 2020 when it was trading at about A$1,000 a unit.
In early 2023, when Ether’s market value hits A$3,000, you decided to swap it all for the world’s largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (perhaps because you thought Bitcoin had better long-term prospects).
That transaction wouldn’t have involved Australian dollars – but the tax office still expects you to report the capital gain as if it had.
So what was the capital gain on that hypothetical transaction?
It is the difference between the market value (in Australian dollars) of the Ether when bought (A$1,000) and the market value of the Bitcoin acquired (A$3,000). The capital gain would be A$2,000.
converting it into cash.
The big exception to this is if you use cryptocurrency as actual currency, to buy goods for personal use – such as a meal, concert ticket or white goods for your home. If you use crypto to buy a personal use asset for less than A$10,000, you can usually disregard the capital gain. This is known as the personal use exemption.
However, there are rules around this to prevent gaming the system.
The longer you’ve held crypto, the more likely the tax office is to regard it as an investment, and deny the exemption. It doesn’t provide any specific time frame but the example on its website mentions longer than six months as indicating the crypto is being held an investment.
For everything else, any crypto disposal is a taxable event, even if it doesn’t involve conversion to fiat currency (in our case, Australian dollars).
Calculating the capital gain
Let’s consider a scenario where you decided to swap one crypto asset for another.
Say you bought A$1,000 worth of the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, Ether, in late 2020 when it was trading at about A$1,000 a unit.
In early 2023, when Ether’s market value hits A$3,000, you decided to swap it all for the world’s largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (perhaps because you thought Bitcoin had better long-term prospects).
That transaction wouldn’t have involved Australian dollars – but the tax office still expects you to report the capital gain as if it had.
So what was the capital gain on that hypothetical transaction?
It is the difference between the market value (in Australian dollars) of the Ether when bought (A$1,000) and the market value of the Bitcoin acquired (A$3,000). The capital gain would be A$2,000.
converting it into cash.
The big exception to this is if you use cryptocurrency as actual currency, to buy goods for personal use – such as a meal, concert ticket or white goods for your home. If you use crypto to buy a personal use asset for less than A$10,000, you can usually disregard the capital gain. This is known as the personal use exemption.
However, there are rules around this to prevent gaming the system.
The longer you’ve held crypto, the more likely the tax office is to regard it as an investment, and deny the exemption. It doesn’t provide any specific time frame but the example on its website mentions longer than six months as indicating the crypto is being held an investment.
For everything else, any crypto disposal is a taxable event, even if it doesn’t involve conversion to fiat currency (in our case, Australian dollars).
Calculating the capital gain
Let’s consider a scenario where you decided to swap one crypto asset for another.
Say you bought A$1,000 worth of the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, Ether, in late 2020 when it was trading at about A$1,000 a unit.
In early 2023, when Ether’s market value hits A$3,000, you decided to swap it all for the world’s largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (perhaps because you thought Bitcoin had better long-term prospects).
That transaction wouldn’t have involved Australian dollars – but the tax office still expects you to report the capital gain as if it had.
So what was the capital gain on that hypothetical transaction?
It is the difference between the market value (in Australian dollars) of the Ether when bought (A$1,000) and the market value of the Bitcoin acquired (A$3,000). The capital gain would be A$2,000.converting it into cash.
The big exception to this is if you use cryptocurrency as actual currency, to buy goods for personal use – such as a meal, concert ticket or white goods for your home. If you use crypto to buy a personal use asset for less than A$10,000, you can usually disregard the capital gain. This is known as the personal use exemption.
However, there are rules around this to prevent gaming the system.
The longer you’ve held crypto, the more likely the tax office is to regard it as an investment, and deny the exemption. It doesn’t provide any specific time frame but the example on its website mentions longer than six months as indicating the crypto is being held an investment.
For everything else, any crypto disposal is a taxable event, even if it doesn’t involve conversion to fiat currency (in our case, Australian dollars).
Calculating the capital gain
Let’s consider a scenario where you decided to swap one crypto asset for another.
Say you bought A$1,000 worth of the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, Ether, in late 2020 when it was trading at about A$1,000 a unit.
In early 2023, when Ether’s market value hits A$3,000, you decided to swap it all for the world’s largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (perhaps because you thought Bitcoin had better long-term prospects).
That transaction wouldn’t have involved Australian dollars – but the tax office still expects you to report the capital gain as if it had.
So what was the capital gain on that hypothetical transaction?
It is the difference between the market value (in Australian dollars) of the Ether when bought (A$1,000) and the market value of the Bitcoin acquired (A$3,000). The capital gain would be A$2,000.
