Australia’s Treasury has released draft legislation to incorporate the OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework, or CARF, into domestic law, formally opening the legislative process for a new crypto tax reporting regime.
The proposal, titled the Treasury Laws Amendment Bill 2026: Taxation Information Reporting, is open for public comment until Oct. 28. According to the Treasury, the bill would establish a two-track structure: one to implement CARF’s international exchange requirements, and another to create an Australian domestic crypto-asset reporting system.
Australia’s CARF path has stretched across three years
Australia did not arrive at CARF this year. In November 2023, it became one of the first 47 jurisdictions to announce support for the framework. By late 2024, the Treasury had begun a public consultation process on how CARF should be implemented locally.
In the 2025-26 Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook, the government said it would move ahead with both CARF-based international information exchange and a domestic crypto reporting regime, while also signaling that the first international exchange of crypto tax data would begin in 2028. The newly published draft bill is the first concrete step to convert those commitments into law.
CARF is designed to extend cross-border tax transparency to crypto
The OECD introduced CARF in August 2022. Its core purpose is to close cross-border tax evasion gaps linked to crypto assets.
The framework follows a logic similar to the Common Reporting Standard, or CRS. CRS already allows more than 110 jurisdictions to automatically exchange financial account information, giving tax authorities visibility into residents’ offshore deposits and investments. CARF applies a similar structure to crypto assets, requiring crypto-asset service providers, including exchanges, wallet service providers, and smart contract platforms, to report users’ crypto transactions, account balances, and income data to local tax authorities.
Australia said 77 jurisdictions have so far committed to adopting CARF, including Australia, the U.K., Canada, South Korea, and Singapore. As more jurisdictions join, the room for cross-border tax avoidance through crypto assets is expected to narrow under the framework’s design.
Automatic exchange is the key feature in the draft
The central feature of the proposal is automatic exchange. In the past, tax authorities seeking access to offshore crypto trading data often had to rely on intelligence cooperation or on self-reporting by users. Under CARF, Australian crypto service providers would regularly report user information to the Australian Taxation Office, or ATO, and the ATO would then share that data automatically with other participating jurisdictions through the CARF mechanism.
The process also works in the other direction. If an Australian taxpayer holds a crypto account in another CARF jurisdiction, information reported by a local virtual asset service provider in that market could, in principle, be transmitted back to the ATO. That is why the draft is being watched as a significant move toward tighter cross-border crypto tax transparency in Australia.
For now, the bill remains at the consultation stage. The Treasury said it will also issue supporting guidance covering compliance obligations for VASPs, reporting formats, and transition arrangements. More than a year remains before the first planned exchange in 2028, but the compliance buildout is already being set in motion.
Crypto compliance changes in Australia are not limited to tax reporting
The Treasury has also flagged another proposal covering crypto platform regulation, referred to in the report as ASIC’s crypto trading platform rules, with an expected start date of April 2027. The background note in the source article said that draft included a capital threshold of AUD 14 million.
Taken together, the tax reporting proposal and the platform rules point to a broader expansion of Australia’s crypto compliance framework.
The proposal may also serve as a reference point elsewhere
The source article described Australia’s move to write CARF into domestic law as an important step in crypto tax transparency. It also noted that some jurisdictions, including Taiwan, have not clearly stated whether they will adopt CARF.
According to the report, if more jurisdictions eventually move in the same direction, local exchanges and wallet service providers could face new compliance costs, while users with cross-border crypto holdings may need to plan tax reporting with greater care as information-sharing becomes more systematic.