What does a crypto tax accountant do?
For the 2026 to 2027 tax year, gains above the £3,000 allowance are taxed at 18% inside the basic rate band and 24% above it, per the Capital Gains Tax rates on gov.uk, checked on 16 October 2026. A crypto tax accountant works out which of your transactions were disposals, what each one cost under the same day, 30 day and Section 104 pooling rules in TCGA 1992, which receipts were income rather than gains, and then files the result.
The SA108 capital gains pages for the 2025 to 2026 tax year carry a separate cryptoassets section, boxes 13.1 to 13.8, so HMRC now sees the crypto figures on their own rather than mixed in with shares. If you had never filed before, the date to register for Self Assessment for the year ended 5 April 2026 was 5 October 2026, and the online return is due by 31 January 2027. If you missed it, register now rather than waiting, because the late notification penalty is worked out on tax still unpaid at 31 January 2027. We prepare the return, complete the capital gains pages of the return from a reconciled ledger, and keep the working papers that prove every box.
Get a quoteWhat we handle
- ✓Full reconciliation across 40+ exchanges, wallets and DeFi protocols
- ✓HMRC Self Assessment, SA100 plus the SA108 cryptoasset boxes
- ✓Staking, mining and airdrop income separated from capital gains
- ✓HMRC nudge letters and Section 9A enquiries
- ✓Voluntary disclosure and previously unfiled years
Do you need an accountant for crypto?
If you bought and held, probably not. If you sold, swapped, spent, staked or used DeFi, hold across several platforms, have unfiled years or have had an HMRC letter, an accountant who does only crypto usually saves more than the fee by correcting an overstated gain. Gains above £3,000 are taxable, and if you are in Self Assessment and your total proceeds for the year passed £50,000 you must report the disposals even when the gain is under the allowance, per gov.uk on when to report, checked on 16 October 2026. In the UK every coin to coin swap is a disposal, so proceeds add up fast without a pound reaching your bank.
Two questions decide most of it. Whether HMRC would treat you as trading or investing, which the badges of trade settle and which changes the tax from CGT to income tax. And whether your records can prove where every coin came from, which is what HMRC’s record keeping rules for crypto ask for. Where a report is clean and the exchange statements agree with it, filing yourself is realistic, and our review of the UK crypto tax software says which tools make that easiest.
The import is usually right. The handful of events that decide the tax are usually wrong, and these are the three we correct most often.
A zero cost basis warning left in
A deposit that never matched a withdrawal is treated as if it cost nothing, so the whole sale price is taxed as gain. The acquisition nearly always exists somewhere.
Your own transfers counted as sales
Moving coins between wallets you own is a transfer. Logged as a disposal it creates a gain on an event that never happened, and the pool it left loses its cost.
The wrong matching method for the UK
Many tools default to FIFO or an average cost that ignores the same day and 30 day rules. HMRC requires the Section 104 pool, and the difference on an active year can run into thousands of pounds.
Correcting these can take thousands of pounds off an overstated capital gains figure, and it is the same reconstruction we apply to shares, property and other capital gains. Where the whole history needs rebuilding rather than correcting, that is our crypto reconciliation service.
How much does a crypto accountant cost?
Among UK firms that do only crypto tax, the going rate for one properly reconciled and filed year is £750 to £2,000, checked against published prices in September 2026. A simple year filed from a clean software report can cost £300 or less. Heavy DeFi or NFT years usually run £1,200 to £2,500, and a multi year catch up with a disclosure to HMRC comes in between £1,500 and £3,500.
What moves the number is the shape of the history. How many years need work, how many transactions, and whether the records are intact. We quote one fixed price in writing after a free review of your actual files, and nothing is charged until you accept it. The pricing page sets your own case against those bands before you speak to anyone, and our services page lists what each engagement includes.
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 that is eighty per cent right, and the whole engagement is the missing twenty. Duplicated imports that double a year of trades, a closed exchange whose history has to be pulled back from the chain, a bridge the tool read as a sale.
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 no 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.
Can HMRC see your crypto?
Almost certainly. HMRC has taken customer data directly from UK exchanges since around 2019 and sent around 81,000 crypto nudge letters in the year to 5 April 2026. Since 1 January 2026 every platform serving UK users has had to collect your name, date of birth, address and National Insurance number or UTR under the Cryptoasset Reporting Framework, and the first reports reach HMRC between 1 January and 31 May 2027, per gov.uk on the information you must give your exchange, checked on 16 October 2026. Refusing to give a UK platform those details carries a penalty of up to £300.
What decides your risk is whether your return matches what HMRC already holds, which is why what Coinbase and the other exchanges hand over matters more than whether you used a UK or an overseas platform. An unprompted correction gets better penalty terms than one HMRC asks for, and the numbers behind that are in what HMRC’s own figures say about the crackdown. Where years are missing, our disclosure and advisory work handles the disclosure.
How do you vet a crypto accountant, including us?
The standard advice in every crypto community is the same, speak to them first and check they understand crypto before paying anything. Here are the questions worth asking on that call, with our answers 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. Here it is Fahad Zar, lead chain analyst and crypto tax expert, and Sehar Javed, chain analyst, and the about page says who they are. Some firms type the software totals into a return unchanged, which is data entry priced as expertise.
Ask who regulates them. Anyone in the UK can call themselves an accountant, so the licence number is the thing to check. We are licensed and regulated by the AAT, licence 1010475, which also supervises the firm for anti-money laundering.
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. There is no hourly meter.
What does the finished work look 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 cryptoasset boxes on the SA108 completed properly, which we walk through in how to report crypto to HMRC.
Timing matters more this year than most. The first CARF reports reach HMRC between 1 January and 31 May 2027, so the 2025 to 2026 return due on 31 January 2027 is the last one filed before automatic exchange reporting begins. For a first estimate from your own figures, use the crypto tax calculator. Figures on this page checked on 16 October 2026.
Common questions
How much does a crypto accountant cost?
Do you need an accountant for crypto?
Do I have to declare crypto to HMRC?
Do I need a crypto tax accountant if I use Koinly?
What do you actually need from me to start?
How long does the work take?
My exchange shut down and I have no records. Is that fixable?
Will using an accountant draw HMRC’s attention?
How many years can you go back?
What stands behind every figure on this page
Every guide on this site is written by a practising crypto tax accountant who files these returns with HMRC. Every figure and every date is checked against gov.uk before a page goes live. When the guidance changes, the page is re-read and the checked date moves with it.
Certified Crypto Accountant is the trading name of Zar Enterprises Ltd, a UK limited company. The firm is licensed and regulated by the Association of Accounting Technicians, which also supervises it for anti-money laundering. The company is registered with the ICO as a data controller and holds professional indemnity insurance, so a named entity answers for every figure you read here. More about the firm, or get in touch.
- Last checked against gov.uk
- Company
- Zar Enterprises Ltd, company number 17310916
- Regulation
- Licensed and regulated by the AAT, licence 1010475
- Data protection
- ICO registration ZC225094
- Insurance
- Professional indemnity insurance with Hiscox
Which parts of the UK do you cover?
All of it, remotely. These pages cover the places we hear from most.