Disclaimer: This article is intended as an informative piece. This is not accounting or tax advice. Please speak to a qualified tax professional about your specific circumstances before acting upon any of the information in this article.
A missing acquisition means that you have made a disposal but Recap cannot find when you originally acquired the asset to calculate the gain or loss. Essentially you have data missing.
How do I know I have a missing acquisition?
Recap flags any disposals that have missing acquisitions. To see them, filter by Missing Acquisitions on the Activity screen, then open a transaction's Tax tab to see how this affects the capital gain calculation. As you can see in the example below, Recap defaults any missing acquisition to zero, so your capital gain will always be the highest possible, ensuring you don't underpay on tax.
How do I locate the missing acquisition?
On the Tax screen, click View Disposals Report for the tax year in question. The missing acquisition will be highlighted with a zero-cost valuation. Use the information here to find the missing transaction in your accounts.
How to fix a missing acquisition
Work through these checks in order. The first two fix the cause without adding anything twice.
Add any missing accounts. The asset may have come from an exchange or wallet you haven't added to Recap, including old exchanges you no longer use. Adding it imports the original purchase.
Check for a Deposit that was really an acquisition. On the Activity screen, filter by the asset and look for an incoming Deposit around the time you received it. If it was income, a gift, a staking reward or an airdrop rather than a move from another of your accounts, open it and change its type. Types such as Income, Receive Gift and Staking Reward record the asset at its market value on the day. The generic Acquisition type adds it at zero cost, so it won't change your gain. We have a guide here: How to reclassify a transaction
Add the transaction manually, only if nothing was imported. For a single transaction, go to the Activity screen and click Add transaction. For several, create a custom account and import them by CSV: Importing CSVs into custom accounts
⚠️ Don't add a manual transaction for something Recap has already imported, for example as a Deposit. Recap would then count the asset twice. Change the existing transaction's type instead.
Considerations
Make sure you import all of your historical transactions into the app. Have you connected all of your accounts? Do you have data on old exchanges that you no longer use? It's always advisable to keep your own records as exchanges are under no obligation to hold your data long term.