How Crypto Is Taxed in Canada

You bought some crypto on an app a few years back, and you've traded a bit since. Canada doesn't treat crypto as money. Part with it and you've made a sale, so half of what you gained goes onto your tax return, where it's taxed at your marginal rate. That includes swapping one coin for another, even when no dollars ever reach your bank account. And if the way you trade starts to look like a business rather than investing, the whole gain gets taxed instead of half.

Key takeaways

• Parting with crypto is a sale. Trading it, spending it and giving it away all count, and so does swapping one coin for another.
• Moving your own crypto between your own wallets isn't a sale, and you report nothing for it.
• Half the gain goes on your return and gets taxed at your marginal rate. The other half isn't taxed at all.
• If you trade the way a dealer trades, your whole profit becomes business income instead, and no single thing you did decides it by itself.
• You're expected to keep your own record of every transaction for six years, because your exchange keeps records to its own standard, not to that six years.

You don't need dollars for a sale to happen

You'd expect selling for Canadian dollars to count. Three more things count exactly the same way. Trading your crypto for a different crypto is a sale, so is using it to pay for goods or services, and so is giving it away as a gift or a donation.² Any of those four ends your ownership of it, and that's when your gain or your loss gets measured.

Those four aren't the whole list. Other situations can end your ownership too.² So if you've done something with your crypto that isn't one of the four, treat it as a question to ask rather than a quiet no.

You are most likely to have missed a swap. You traded one coin for another and it still counts as a sale.

Moving crypto between two wallets you own is different, and there's nothing to report for it.² If you pulled everything off an exchange onto your own hardware last year, you didn't sell anything by doing it.

Trading one coin for another

You made two transactions in one move. You disposed of the coin you gave up, at whatever it was worth in Canadian dollars that day, and acquired the other one at the same value. Your gain on the coin you gave up is taxable in the year you swapped.

A worked example puts numbers on it.² You buy one crypto-asset for $20,600, and you pay with units of a second one you'd originally bought for $15,000. You've disposed of that second one at $20,600, so the gain is $5,600, and $2,800 of it goes onto your return.¹

Swap it the other way, with the coin you gave up having cost you $25,000, and the same trade gives you a $4,400 loss, of which $2,200 is deductible.² Your capital loss only comes off your capital gains, never off your salary. Where you've no gains for it to land against, you can take it back three years or forward with no time limit.²

Trade often and this compounds in a way you won't feel until spring. Every swap you made through the year is its own disposition carrying its own gain. If the coins you swapped into have fallen since, your gain doesn't shrink to match, because it was fixed on the day of each trade.

Paying for something with crypto

Buying something with crypto is a barter transaction, because what you gave the seller isn't government-issued currency.² You disposed of your crypto at its value that day, so if it had risen since you bought it, you have a gain to report on a purchase that felt like spending.

The person you paid has a rule of their own, and you'll want it if you run a business that accepts crypto. They include either the value of what they supplied or the value of the crypto they took, whichever of the two is more readily valued.² That test decides the number.

Is it a capital gain or is it business income?

It depends on how you behave, not on what you tick. If your conduct looks like someone dealing in crypto rather than holding it, your whole profit is business income and all of it goes onto your return. If you bought some and held it, your gain is a capital gain and half of it goes on.² Nobody elects between these two.

Six things point toward a business. How often you transact, how briefly you hold, how much you know about these markets, how much time you spend studying them, whether you borrowed to buy, and whether you advertise that you'll buy crypto.² Those six come from a bulletin about securities, and using them doesn't make crypto a security.²

None of the six settles it by itself. It's decided case by case across everything you did, and even a single transaction can be business income where it amounts to a venture you entered into for profit, separate from how you normally earn your living.² So having done it only once doesn't settle it in your favour.

Where you honestly can't tell which side you're on, the deciding facts are ones only you hold. The trading history, the reasons at the time, how it was financed. Your full transaction record across every platform is where the answer is, and if it still isn't clear from that, this is the point to pay someone to look at your numbers.

Mining and staking rewards

If you mine, what you receive usually counts as business income at the time you earn it.³ Mining is treated as a business in most cases rather than in all of them, on the reasoning that the scale and resources involved make it one.³ Your hardware can help. Application-specific integrated circuit miners and graphics processing unit rigs can meet the conditions for capital cost allowance class 50, which lets you deduct the equipment over time.³ You value what you received the same way you value everything else, in Canadian dollars on the day.⁶

Staking is covered for one setup only, and yours may not be it. Rewards from staking on a centralized exchange platform will generally be treated as income, and they land in your income when they're credited to your wallet on that platform.³ Nothing has been said about staking you run yourself, off a platform, holding your own keys. That silence isn't permission, and it isn't a rule either. If that's your setup, it sits outside what's been published, and the answer needs advice on the facts.

Does GST or HST apply to what you sold?

Which token you sold decides this for you, and what you did with it doesn't come into it. Goods and services tax, or GST, and the harmonised sales tax that replaces it in some provinces both work the same way here. Sell a crypto-asset that meets the definition of a virtual payment instrument and you've made an exempt supply of a financial service, so there's no sales tax on the sale and no input tax credits either.⁴ If what you sold was bitcoin, ether or litecoin, those are the examples given as generally qualifying.⁴ Sell one that doesn't meet the definition and you've likely made a taxable sale of intangible personal property, so you'd collect the tax and you'd generally be able to claim input tax credits against it.⁴

Exempt doesn't mean better for you. If you sell a virtual payment instrument, the sales tax you paid on your own costs stays paid, because there's no taxable sale to claim it back against. You get the exemption and you lose the credits together.

Most individuals never reach this, because you'd have to be registered. The threshold is $30,000. You're a small supplier while your worldwide taxable supplies, counting anyone associated with you, stay at or under that figure in a single calendar quarter and over the last four consecutive quarters, and the line rises to $50,000 for public service bodies. Charities and public institutions qualify on a gross revenue test of $250,000 or less.⁴

Mining works differently again. If you mine, you're generally treated as not carrying on a commercial activity for sales tax, so you don't collect the tax on what you receive and you can't claim input tax credits on it.⁴ That covers sales tax and nothing else. You may still be carrying on a business for income tax on the same activity.⁴ There's also a narrow exception. In some situations, where you mine for another person whose identity you know, you may be making a taxable supply, required to collect, and eligible for input tax credits after all.⁴

The records you're expected to keep

You're expected to have more behind each transaction than most people keep.⁵ For every transaction you need the number of units and which crypto-asset, the date and the time, the Canadian-dollar value at that moment, and what the transaction was and who your other party was, which counts even where all you've got is their address.

You also keep a picture of the whole year. That means the addresses of every wallet you used, plus the opening balance with its cost and the closing balance, for each asset, each year.⁵ All of it stays with you for at least six years from the end of the last tax year your records relate to.⁵

If yours has already gone, what you owe when you sell an investment covers how a cost base gets rebuilt when the paperwork has vanished. If you're staring at four years of app history you never downloaded, the practical way in is this year first, then backwards as far as you can get. You'll get more out of a partial record you keep up than out of the complete one you're planning to build in April. Maya reaches the same point in The System That Runs Itself, where a year of small habits leaves her money running without her watching it.

Putting a Canadian dollar figure on each transaction

You use fair market value, and you're free to choose how you arrive at it as long as you're reasonable, use the same method every year, and keep a record of how you did it.⁶ Two approaches are named as acceptable. You can take the rate from the same broker you trade on, or average the high, low, open and close across several high-volume brokers.⁶

You get no prescribed price feed and no official rate to look up. That sounds unsatisfying, and it's genuinely all you're being asked for. You'll do better picking your one source and staying with it for years than hunting for the best one.

Each kind of crypto-asset you hold is a separate asset and gets valued on its own.⁶ If you hold four, you're keeping four running records.

Working out what each purchase cost you is the other side of this. For how that cost gets built up, and why the figure showing in your app may not be it, see what you owe when you sell an investment.

Two ways this goes

If you bought some crypto and held on to it, you're where most people are, on capital treatment, because holding isn't trading and none of the six pointers describes what you did. Half the gain goes on your return in the year you part with it, and you're done.

You land on business income instead when your own conduct puts you there. That's trading several times a week, following these markets closely, borrowing to fund the position. Then the whole profit lands on your return, with the expenses coming off it, and neither treatment was anything you picked.

Three things move you between these answers. You decide none of them by choosing. The tax follows what you did with the crypto, then how you behaved while doing it, and then, separately, which token was sold.

You may be sitting in between, having traded a fair bit one year and barely at all the next. No threshold has been published that would settle it for you,² and anybody who tells you there's a number of trades that flips you over is inventing it.

To see what the taxable half costs you at your own rate and province, run your own numbers against interest and dividends side by side. If you hold more than crypto, the four kinds of investment income sets out how each of the others is treated, and the rest of the taxes guides cover the credits, the deadlines and the slips.

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Common questions

Do I have to report crypto if I never cashed out to dollars?+

Yes, if you traded one coin for another. That's a sale of the coin you gave up, measured in Canadian dollars on the day, and it's taxable even though no money reached your bank account. You're only clear of it if all you did was buy and hold, or if you've simply moved your own crypto between your own wallets.

Is crypto taxed as a capital gain or as business income in Canada?+

It depends on how you behave, and you don't get to pick. If you bought and held, you'll have a capital gain and half of it goes on your return. If you trade frequently, hold briefly, borrowed to buy, or advertise that you'll buy crypto, your whole profit can be business income instead. No single one of those decides it on its own.

Do I pay tax when I move crypto between my own wallets?+

No. Moving crypto between wallets you own isn't a disposition, so you've got nothing to report for it. Your own record of it still earns its place, because your addresses and your dates show the movement was all it was.

Are staking rewards taxable in Canada?+

If you stake on a centralized exchange platform, then generally yes. Your rewards go into your income when they're credited to your wallet on that platform. Nothing has been published about staking you run yourself off a platform, so if that's you, get advice on your own facts rather than assuming the same answer applies.

Do I charge GST or HST when I sell bitcoin?+

No. Bitcoin is generally accepted as a virtual payment instrument, so a sale of it is normally an exempt financial service and you don't charge sales tax on it. You also can't claim input tax credits on your related costs. If what you sold isn't a virtual payment instrument, an NFT for instance, it works the other way round for you.

What if my exchange shut down and I can't get my transaction history?+

You still have to report what you did, and the record's your responsibility rather than the exchange's. If yours has already gone, rebuilding a cost base out of what you can still find is the same job you'd face with an old share purchase, and the capital gains guide walks through it.

How long do I have to keep my crypto records?+

At least six years from the end of the last tax year they relate to. If you're relying on an exchange to hold them for you, that's a risk you're carrying yourself, because exchanges keep records to their own standards rather than to that six years.

Sources

1. Justice Laws, Income Tax ActSection 38(a): a taxable capital gain is ½ of the capital gain, subject to paragraphs (a.1) to (a.3). The Act uses the symbol, not the words. Act current to 2026-06-21. Accessed 2026-09-06.
2. CRAReporting income from crypto-asset transactions. Supports what counts as a disposition and that the list is not exhaustive, wallet transfers not being dispositions, barter treatment and the more-readily-valued test, the six business-or-capital factors and the securities caveat, an adventure in the nature of trade, the worked swap and loss examples, and the treatment of capital losses. Accessed 2026-09-06.
3. CRAReporting income from crypto-asset mining and staking activities. Supports mining income at the time earned, mining being a business in most cases, capital cost allowance class 50 for ASIC miners and GPU rigs, and staking rewards on a centralized exchange platform being income when credited. Accessed 2026-09-06.
4. CRACollecting and remitting GST/HST from crypto-asset transactions. Supports the virtual payment instrument exemption and the loss of input tax credits with it, the treatment of other crypto-assets as intangible personal property, the small supplier thresholds, and the mining position with its income-tax and known-recipient qualifiers. Accessed 2026-09-06.
5. CRAKeeping books and records of crypto-assets for tax filing. Supports the list of records to keep, the six-year retention period, and the advice to export regularly in case an exchange ceases operating or you lose access. Accessed 2026-09-06.
6. CRADetermining the value of crypto-assets for tax filing. Supports fair market value, the reasonable-and-consistent method with a record of how it was used, the two accepted valuation approaches, and each type of crypto-asset being valued separately. Accessed 2026-09-06.

Educational, not financial advice. Figures verified against primary sources on the date shown.