What a crypto tax accountant actually does
A crypto tax accountant reconstructs your on-chain and exchange activity into a defensible tax position and files it correctly. The work is part forensic data reconstruction, part precise filing. Software does neither well. A generalist accountant does the second but not the first.
In the UK we reconcile under HMRC Share Pooling (TCGA 1992 s.104), split staking and airdrop income from capital gains, and file the SA100 with SA108. In the US we classify every disposal on IRS Form 8949, carry the totals to Schedule D, and report ordinary income on Schedule 1.
What we handle
- ✓Full reconciliation across 40+ exchanges, wallets and DeFi protocols
- ✓HMRC Self Assessment: SA100 plus SA108 capital gains pages
- ✓IRS filing: Form 8949, Schedule D, and ordinary income on Schedule 1
- ✓Staking, mining and airdrop income split from capital gains
- ✓HMRC nudge letters, Section 9A enquiries and IRS CP2000 notices
- ✓Voluntary disclosure and previously unfiled years
The three errors we see in generalist and software reports
A high-street accountant who files your PAYE return is rarely equipped to reconcile a Uniswap V3 liquidity position or a Lido stETH rebase. These are not edge cases in crypto. They are the norm.
FIFO instead of Share Pooling
Most software defaults to FIFO. FIFO is wrong for UK tax and overstates gains by 15 to 40 percent in volatile periods.
Missing cost basis on transfers
Coins transferred in without cost basis get taxed on the entire sale price, overstating the gain by the full original purchase cost.
Transfers booked as disposals
Wallet-to-wallet moves wrongly logged as sales create phantom gains on disposals that never happened.
Correcting these errors can remove thousands of pounds from an overstated capital gains figure. Proper reconciliation may reduce overstated gains where the original report contains errors. That is not tax avoidance. It is getting the number right. The same reconstruction work applies to shares, property and other capital gains, which we also handle.
Three steps to a filed return
Free 30-minute review
Share your Koinly, CoinTracker or CSV exports. We tell you whether the numbers are filable, where the errors are, and give a fixed quote.
Reconciliation and review
We rebuild the data, apply the correct jurisdiction rules, and show you the corrected report before anything is filed.
Filing and sign-off
We file with HMRC or the IRS and hand over the full working papers. Standard cases are completed within 14 to 21 days.
Standard UK Self Assessment or US filing for a moderate-volume holder typically ranges from £400 to £1,200 plus VAT. High-volume DeFi or multi-year work is quoted after the call. No fee is charged until you accept the quote.
Need the full process breakdown? See our crypto tax service. Need planning or disclosure rather than a filing? See our crypto tax advisors. Filing the UK side? Read the crypto gains tax UK guide.
We work inside your crypto tax software, and we say so
The software is where the real work happens, so that is where we work. Most clients arrive with a crypto tax software account, Koinly being the most common, that is eighty per cent right, and the whole engagement is the missing twenty. Zero cost basis warnings where a deposit never matched a withdrawal. Transfers between your own wallets counted as disposals. Duplicated imports doubling a year of trades. Default settings running the wrong matching method for the UK.
People in crypto forums say a software report needs hundreds or even thousands of adjustments before it reflects the correct tax position, and having rebuilt many of these files, that is not an exaggeration. One investor described spending twelve hours trying to make his gains match his own exchange statements before giving up. That reconciliation, wallet by wallet until the balances actually prove out, is the product here. The return at the end is the easy part, and the method is documented in how our reconciliation works.
You keep your own software account. We work in it with view access, document every adjustment, and hand it back reconciled, so next year starts clean instead of starting over.
How to vet a crypto accountant, including us
The standard advice in every crypto community is the same, speak to them first and check they actually understand crypto before paying anything. Good advice. Here are the questions worth asking on that call, with our answers already on the record.
Ask what happens to a token swap. If the answer is anything other than a disposal of the first token at its sterling value that day, end the call. Swaps are where most unreported gains hide.
Ask how they treat a zero cost basis warning. The wrong answer is to file anyway, which taxes the whole sale as pure gain. The right answer is to find the missing acquisition, because it nearly always exists.
Ask which matching rules apply to tokens. Same day first, then 30 days, then the Section 104 pool. An accountant who cannot recite that order will file whatever the software prints.
Ask who does the work. Some firms type the software totals into a return unchanged, which is data entry priced as expertise. You could do that yourself in an afternoon.
Ask what the fee covers, in writing. Ours is fixed, quoted after a free review of your actual files, and the quote states what is included before any work starts. No hourly meters.
What the finished work looks like
Competence is easier to show than to claim, so here is what you actually receive. A balance proof per wallet and exchange, showing the reconstructed history agrees with what the platforms say you hold. An adjustment log listing every change made to your software file and why. The capital gains computation with the matching rules applied and each disposal traceable to source. And the filed return with the new cryptoasset boxes completed properly, which we explain in how to report crypto to HMRC.
The timing matters more this year than most. HMRC sent roughly 81,000 crypto nudge letters last tax year, and exchange data starts arriving automatically from May 2027 under CARF. The full picture is in what HMRC’s own numbers say about the crackdown, and the short version is that unprompted beats prompted, by design. Figures on this page checked 25 August 2026.
Common questions
What does a crypto tax accountant do that software cannot?
Software categorises transactions using a default method and cannot give advice or deal with HMRC on your behalf as your agent. A crypto tax accountant reconciles the data manually, applies the correct jurisdiction rules, files the return, and stands behind the figures.
Do I need a crypto tax accountant if I use Koinly?
Often yes. Koinly is a useful data aggregator, but its output depends entirely on correct settings and clean imports. We frequently find UK reports left on FIFO and missing cost basis. We review the Koinly file and correct it before filing.
Can you act as my crypto tax accountant if I live outside London?
Yes. We serve clients across the UK and US remotely. Our London office is our base, not our limit.
How many years can you go back?
Multi-year and previously unfiled cases are a core part of our work, including voluntary disclosure to HMRC and amended returns to the IRS.
What do you actually need from me to start?
Read only access to your tax software account if you have one, exchange history exports where you do not, and public wallet addresses for anything on chain. Nothing that can move funds, ever. The free review runs on that alone and tells you what state your data is really in.
How long does the work take?
The first diagnostic usually lands within days of getting access. A single year across a handful of platforms typically finishes well inside a month, and multi year reconstructions run longer in proportion to the mess. The honest estimate comes with the quote, and filing deadlines drive the priority.
My exchange shut down and I have no records. Is that fixable?
Usually yes. On chain history is permanent, counterparty exchanges hold the other side of transfers, and old emails carry deposit confirmations. Where a figure genuinely cannot be evidenced we document the estimation basis, which HMRC accepts when the method is reasonable and disclosed.
Will using an accountant put me on HMRC’s radar?
No. Agent authorisation is routine and HMRC does not treat professional representation as a signal of anything. The data that puts people on the radar comes from exchanges, and it arrives whether or not you have help interpreting it.
How much does a crypto tax accountant cost?
Most UK crypto tax work costs between £400 and £1,200 plus VAT, correct as at August 2026. That covers a standard Self Assessment or US filing for a moderate-volume holder, including the reconciliation and the working papers. High-volume DeFi, multi-year catch-up and voluntary disclosure are quoted after a free review, because the cost is driven by transaction count and how much of the history has to be rebuilt, not by how much crypto you hold. No fee is charged until you accept the quote.
Do you need an accountant for crypto?
Often no. If your transactions sit on one exchange, your gains stayed inside the £3,000 annual exempt amount, and the exchange’s own report reconciles to your records, filing it yourself is realistic. An accountant earns the fee when the history is broken, which usually means transfers between your own wallets have been counted as disposals, acquisition costs never reached the pool, an exchange closed and took your records with it, or several years need fixing at once. The test is not how much crypto you hold. It is whether anyone can prove where each coin came from.
Where we work
We serve crypto investors remotely across the whole UK and the US, with dedicated pages for the places we hear from most.
Crypto tax accountant Manchester
Crypto tax accountant Birmingham
Crypto tax accountant Edinburgh
Crypto tax accountant GlasgowCrypto tax accountant New YorkCrypto tax accountant CaliforniaCrypto tax accountant TexasCrypto tax accountant Florida
Crypto tax accountant Bristol
Crypto tax accountant Leeds
Crypto tax accountant Liverpool
Local crypto tax accountants
We work with clients across the UK remotely. Find your city:
London ·
Manchester ·
Birmingham ·
Edinburgh