In an effort to standardise a crypto tax reporting framework, Australia is working on a regulation with its Treasury officials announcing on Thursday that a newly drafted bill would write the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD’s) Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework, known as CARF, into Australian law.
The bill, formally called Treasury Laws Amendment Bill 2026: Tax information reporting, is now open for public feedback, with submissions accepted through October 28. The legislation would also set up a separate domestic system for reporting crypto activity, giving Australia two parallel reporting tracks working together.
This effort fits into a larger tax transparency push the government has been building, tracing back to commitments outlined in the 2025–26 Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook. Alongside the bill itself, Treasury released an explanatory memorandum to walk through its details and opened a consultation portal for written submissions. Whether the bill advances to Parliament, and in what form, will hinge on how officials weigh the feedback they receive.
CARF isn’t new globally. The OECD finalized the standard back in August 2022, designed specifically to close gaps that let crypto holders dodge taxes as the asset class grew. Its mandates include asking businesses providing crypto services to verify who their customers are and keep records of transactions, covering everything from crypto-to-cash trades to swaps between different digital assets and certain asset transfers. However, how companies hand that information over to tax authorities, is left up to each country’s own laws.
Once operational, the domestic reporting system would funnel transaction data involving Australian residents to the Australian Taxation Office. Treasury has been clear that this sits on top of, not in place of, the international reporting duties CARF already imposes.
The draft legislation doesn’t stop at crypto. It also touches the Common Reporting Standard, an older mechanism that already lets countries swap data on certain financial accounts held across borders. An earlier round of consultation on CARF had also ran from November 2024 through January 2025.
Exchanges and other firms that handle crypto transactions would carry most of the compliance burden under these rules, functioning as the intermediaries required to collect and report the data. What that compliance actually looks like in practice, though, won’t be settled until Parliament passes final legislation and tax authorities finalize their specific requirements.
