The era of perceived tax anonymity for crypto assets has ended. As of Jan. 1, 2026, a coordinated global tax reporting regime, the Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF), is officially in effect. Crypto service providers across an initial 48 countries are now required to begin collecting detailed user transaction data for eventual submission to tax authorities.

The framework, developed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and backed by the G20, compels exchanges, brokers, and some digital asset service providers will implement new due diligence procedures. These firms must now identify the tax residency of their clients and record their crypto transactions, including exchanges between crypto and fiat, trades between crypto-assets, and certain transfers.

“The CARF provides for the automatic exchange of tax-relevant information on crypto-assets and was developed to address the rapid growth of the crypto-asset market and to ensure that recent gains in global tax transparency are not gradually eroded,” the OECD states in its official documentation.

Data collection for the 2026 calendar year is now underway. The first automatic exchange of this information between international tax authorities is scheduled to begin in 2027. The initial bloc of participating jurisdictions includes the United Kingdom and European Union member states.

Compliance desks at major venues like Coinbase and Kraken have been preparing for this shift for 18 months. The operational burden is immense. Smaller exchanges unable to bear the cost of CARF-compliant reporting infrastructure are expected to fold or merge.

This framework effectively aligns the digital asset industry with the transparency standards of traditional finance, mirroring the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) that governs banks. For trading desks and institutional players, CARF introduces a new, unavoidable layer of compliance overhead.

It eliminates the viability of using non-US exchanges as a method of obscuring gains and complicates cross-border operations. The standardization of reporting is a double-edged sword. While it creates clear operational rules, it also provides global tax agencies with a powerful, unified tool for enforcement, increasing audit risk for all market participants.

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