Crypto tax calculator Canada

For most people who hold it as an investment, crypto is capital property. Buying coins with dollars is not a taxable event; the cost simply joins the coin's pool. The tax falls on disposal, and a disposal happens when you sell for dollars, swap one coin for another, or spend coins on goods. Each one realises a gain or a loss counted in Canadian dollars at the time of the transaction.

Crypto held or traded as a business is business income instead, with no 50% inclusion. That is a facts-and-circumstances question the calculator leaves to you; everything here prices a holder's disposals.

Every buy of the same coin pools into a running total cost and quantity, so each unit costs the pool's average. A disposal's cost side is the units disposed of times that average, which is why the same coins bought at three different prices produce one cost base, not three.

The gain is the proceeds in Canadian dollars minus that average cost. Losses net against gains within the year, and 50% of the net gain lands on line 12700, taxed through the year's federal brackets at your marginal rate. Your province taxes the same half a second time through its own brackets.

You buy 1 BTC for $30,000 on February 10, 2026 and 0 BTC for $18,000 on April 3, 2026. The pool holds 1 BTC at $48,000, all at one average. On June 24, 2026 you sell 0 BTC for $24,000, and on August 12, 2026 you swap 0 BTC for ether worth $13,500.

The sale realises $3,429 and the swap $3,214: proceeds minus each disposal's share of the pool at the average. Together $6,643, of which 50%, $3,321, lands in your income. The federal tax on it at $85,000 of other income is $681, all inside the 20.5% bracket. The coins still held, 0 BTC at $17,143, keep the same average for the next disposal.

• Treating a swap as a pause. Trading bitcoin for ether disposes of the bitcoin at its Canadian dollar value at the swap. The gain is real and taxable even though no dollars arrived, and that same value opens the ether's pool.
• Measuring in the coin's own denomination. Every leg, the buy and the disposal, counts in Canadian dollars at the transaction date. A trade quoted in another currency needs its Canadian dollar value before it counts.
• Forgetting that spending is a disposal. Coins used to pay for goods are disposed of at their Canadian dollar value, with a gain or a loss to match.
• Buying the same coin within 30 days before or after a loss. The superficial loss rule denies the loss when you or an affiliated person acquire the same coin in that 61-day window and still hold it at the end of the 30th day after the sale, and the denied amount adds to the cost base of the coins you bought. The calculator flags the purchase in its checklist; it never adjusts the loss for you.
• Splitting one coin into pools. All buys of the same coin are one pool at average cost. Buying the dip does not open a second cheaper pool; it lowers the average.