What is included in a crypto tax service?
Four things, every time. The sections below take them in the order the work happens, from the free review to the amended return if one is ever needed,
Full reconciliation
Every exchange export and wallet history goes into one ledger, transfers between your own wallets are matched, and each token is pooled under TCGA 1992 section 104.
Income and gains split
Staking, mining, lending and airdrop receipts are valued in pounds on the day they arrive and reported as income. Everything sold or swapped is a disposal for Capital Gains Tax.
Filing
The SA100 and the SA108 are filed with HMRC as your agent, with the cryptoasset section completed and the figures tied back to the ledger.
An audit trail you keep
Working papers that show where every figure came from, so the return holds up if HMRC asks. You keep them whatever happens next year.
What happens in the free review?
You send whatever you have. A software report, the exports from each exchange, the public addresses of your wallets, or just a list of the platforms you have used and the years involved. Within 48 hours you get a written verdict on whether the figure you hold can be filed as it stands, where it is wrong if it cannot, and a fixed quote in writing for putting it right. Nothing is charged for the review and nothing is charged until you accept the quote. If the report is sound we say so and you file it yourself. The free review page explains what to send and what the verdict looks like.
The review is also where we work out which years are involved. If you have never filed and your gains for a year were above the allowance, or your proceeds passed £50,000 while you were registered for Self Assessment, that year needs a return, per gov.uk on working out whether you need to pay. Unfiled years are quoted separately and our crypto tax advisors handle any disclosure to HMRC that goes with them.
How is your history reconciled?
Once you accept the quote, every export and every wallet goes into one ledger and each row is matched by hand. Moving coins between addresses you control is not a disposal, per HMRC at CRYPTO22100, so those rows are paired as transfers and the original cost travels with the coins. Each type of token then sits in its own section 104 pool with one pooled cost, with the same day and 30 day matching rules applied first, as set out at CRYPTO22200. This is the stage software gets wrong most often, and the reconciliation page shows a worked example of a transfer turning into a phantom gain.
You see the corrected ledger before anything is filed, with every row traced to the export or transaction hash it came from. Where an exchange has closed and nothing can be evidenced, the estimate and the basis for it are written down, which is what HMRC accepts when the method is reasonable.
Get a quoteWhat the reconciliation covers
- ✓Exchange exports from the UK and overseas platforms you have used, including closed ones where any file survives
- ✓Wallet to wallet transfers matched so they are never taxed as disposals
- ✓Missing purchase records rebuilt from historic prices and the chain itself
- ✓Uniswap and other DEX liquidity positions, liquid staking tokens such as stETH, bridges and wrapped assets
- ✓High volume histories where one year runs to thousands of rows
- ✓Software reports reviewed and corrected rather than typed into the return unchanged
How are income and capital gains split?
Tokens you receive from mining, staking, lending or a liquidity pool count as income, valued in pounds on the day you receive them, and gov.uk treats them as other taxable income when the activity is not a trade, per the guidance on receiving cryptoassets. The first £1,000 of trading and miscellaneous income in a year is covered by the trading allowance, and your crypto income counts towards it. Airdrops are income only when something was done in return for them, under CRYPTO21250, and selling an airdropped token later can still produce a gain. Our staking guide and the airdrop guide go through each case.
Everything sold, swapped for another token, spent or given away is a disposal for Capital Gains Tax. The gain on each disposal is proceeds less the pooled cost, the first £3,000 of gains in the year is exempt, and the rest is taxed at 18% while it sits inside the £37,700 basic rate band and 24% above it, per gov.uk. Tokens you already paid Income Tax on are not taxed again on the same value, only on any rise after you received them. The crypto gains tax guide covers the calculation in full, and the crypto tax calculator gives you a first figure from your own rows.
What goes on the SA108 and the cryptoasset section?
Capital gains are reported on the SA108 supplementary pages of the SA100 return. Since the 2024 to 2025 tax year the return has carried a separate cryptoasset section, which gov.uk confirms, so crypto disposals are no longer mixed in with shares and property. The figures that go in are the number of disposals, the total proceeds, the allowable costs and the gain or loss, each taken straight from the reconciled ledger. Losses are claimed on the same pages so they can be carried forward against later gains.
Crypto income goes on the main return as other taxable income, and if an employer paid you in tokens the value counts as money’s worth and should already have gone through PAYE. Our guide to reporting crypto to HMRC walks through the return box by box, and the capital gains Self Assessment guide covers the SA108 for anyone with shares or property in the same year. You approve the completed return before it is sent, and we file it as your agent.
When does the return have to be filed?
The tax year ends on 5 April. If you have never filed before, you must register for Self Assessment by 5 October 2026 for the year that ended 5 April 2026, per gov.uk. The online return and the tax are both due by the end of 31 January 2027, and a paper return by 31 October 2026, per the Self Assessment deadlines. A standard case is filed within 14 to 21 days of receiving your exports, so sending them in December still leaves room. Sending them in the last week of January does not.
This year the dates carry more weight than usual. Every UK exchange and broker has been collecting identity and transaction data on its users since 1 January 2026 under the Cryptoasset Reporting Framework, and the first reports reach HMRC between 1 January and 31 May 2027, per gov.uk on CARF reporting. The return due on 31 January 2027 is the last one filed before HMRC holds its own copy of your disposals. Every crypto tax deadline for 2026 and the UK tax year dates are set out in their own guides, and the registration guide covers the UTR and what to expect from HMRC.
What happens after the return is filed?
You get the filed return, the HMRC submission receipt, the reconciled ledger and the working papers, and we keep the record so next year starts from a clean pool rather than a blank page. If something turns up later, a forgotten wallet or an exchange export that arrives after the deadline, a return can be corrected within 12 months of the filing deadline, so a 2024 to 2025 return can be amended until 31 January 2027, per gov.uk on correcting a return. If HMRC writes to you about a filed year, the papers are the answer, and the advisory side of the practice handles the reply.
Does the service cover limited companies and people paid in crypto?
Yes to both, with a different return. A company that holds or trades crypto pays Corporation Tax on its chargeable gains, pooled under the company rules in the Corporation Tax chapter of HMRC’s cryptoassets manual, at 25% on profits above £250,000 and 19% at £50,000 or below, with marginal relief between, per the Corporation Tax rates on gov.uk. Our guide to crypto in a limited company covers when a company makes sense and when it does not.
If you are paid in tokens, by an employer or as a contractor, the value on the day is income. An employer should run it through PAYE as money’s worth, and a contractor reports it on the Self Assessment return, per gov.uk. Any rise in value between receipt and sale is then a capital gain. The guide to being paid in crypto sets out both routes.
How much does a crypto tax service cost?
One fixed price, quoted in writing after the free review, and nothing is charged until you accept it. Among UK firms that do only crypto tax, one properly reconciled and filed year costs £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.
The pricing page puts your own history against those bands in about twenty seconds, the services page lists every engagement we offer, and the crypto tax accountants page explains how to vet a firm before you pay one.
Common questions about the crypto tax service
What is included in a crypto tax service?
How long does the crypto tax service take?
How much does a crypto accountant cost?
Do you need an accountant for crypto?
What does a crypto accountant do?
Can HMRC see your crypto?
Do I need to use specific software?
What if my exchange has closed or I lost access?
Who does the work?
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