What happened
The Treasury in Canberra released a consultation paper on Thursday proposing that Australia adopt the OECD's Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework, known as CARF, per Crypto. News. The framework was finalised by the OECD in 2023 and sits alongside the Common Reporting Standard that already governs cross-border bank data.
Public feedback closes on October 28. Under the proposed timeline, reporting crypto-asset service providers headquartered or operating in Australia would begin collecting user identity details and transaction-level data from January 1, 2027. The Australian Taxation Office would receive the first filings in 2028 and begin exchanging them with partner jurisdictions the same year.
The paper covers centralised exchanges, brokers, custodial wallet providers, and some decentralised platforms where an identifiable intermediary facilitates trades. Stablecoins, tokenised assets, and derivatives referencing crypto all fall within scope. The Treasury said the design mirrors the OECD's model rules closely to limit compliance friction for firms already building CARF systems in other jurisdictions.
Why it matters
CARF is the biggest tax-transparency push the crypto industry has faced. Forty-eight jurisdictions, including the UK, Germany, France, Singapore, Japan and the Cayman Islands, have committed to the 2027 reporting start, and Australia's move brings one of the Asia-Pacific's largest retail crypto markets into line. The ATO estimates between one and two million Australians hold crypto, and the agency has run letter campaigns against suspected under-reporters since 2019.
The shift is structural. Once the data pipes are live, hiding gains by routing through a foreign exchange becomes materially harder. The information a Binance or Kraken customer in Sydney gives at onboarding will flow back to the ATO automatically, and the same loop runs in reverse for Australians using domestic platforms with offshore residency claims.