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.

One of the most important messages to come from the recent HMRC guidance is the importance of keeping records of all cryptoasset activity. All of the HMRC articles speak about this because it is the easiest way to prove your acquisition costs and cryptoasset history to HMRC.

HMRC’s guidance on how to keep records states the following:

Cryptoasset exchanges may only keep records of transactions for a short period, or the exchange may no longer be in existence when an individual completes a tax return. The onus is therefore on the individual to keep separate records for each cryptoasset transaction, and these must include:

It is important for individuals not to rely solely on exchanges to keep records of their data as there have been many instances of dead exchanges that old users cannot obtain their transaction history from. Therefore, exporting a copy of your data from the exchanges and wallets that you use on a regular basis is good practice.

Additionally, keeping this data even after submitting tax returns for the relevant year is vital. This will help with any HMRC compliance checks, allow the calculation of pool values in future tax returns and allow cryptoasset users to adapt to any changes in HMRC’s cryptoasset tax guidance.

Recap allows you to automatically import the relevant data from cryptocurrency exchanges and wallets and bring all of your transactions into one place. You can then produce a tax report which can be used to create your capital gains tax return.
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​Need to sort out your crypto taxes? Use Recap, the privacy focused cryptocurrency accounting software to calculate the taxable gain or loss on your cryptocurrency investments!