NFTs and the ATO: What to Record When You Buy or Sell

This is general educational information, not tax advice. Your treatment depends on your circumstances — for anything beyond record-keeping hygiene, talk to a registered tax agent. Everything here follows the ATO's own published guidance (linked throughout).

1. When tax applies

Per the ATO's NFT guidance, an NFT can be taxed:

• as a CGT asset under the capital gains tax regime,
• on revenue account as trading stock,
• as part of a business, or
• under a profit-making scheme.

Which regime applies depends on how and why you're holding and transacting — a collector selling the occasional piece sits in different territory from someone trading daily or minting for income.

2. What counts as a taxable event

A CGT event happens on disposal. The ATO counts as disposal:

• selling the NFT (for crypto or fiat),
• trading or swapping it for another crypto asset,
• converting it to Australian or foreign currency,
• gifting it,
• spending it on goods or services.

Buying and holding is not a taxable event — the record-keeping obligation starts at acquisition so you can establish cost base later.

3. The records to keep per transaction

The ATO's crypto-asset guidance expects records sufficient to work out the gain or loss. In practice, per acquisition and disposal keep:

• the date and time of the transaction,
• the AUD value at that moment (the ATO uses Reserve Bank exchange rates for crypto-to-AUD conversion — see their transaction guidance),
• the on-chain transaction ID and counterparty address,
• what the proceeds/cost were (crypto amount + what it was worth in AUD),
• marketplace fees and gas paid (they may affect cost base/proceeds),
• which wallet and venue were involved.

The ATO states that it runs a crypto asset data-matching program with Australian exchanges and matches that data against what you report in your return — so keep your own records accurate rather than relying on estimates.

4. Tools that exist for this

Dedicated crypto-tax software can import wallet and exchange history and produce the working papers an accountant expects — Australian-built options include Summ (formerly Crypto Tax Calculator), and Koinly is widely used internationally. We haven't independently evaluated either; they're named as category examples, not recommendations. CoinSpot and other Australian exchanges also provide transaction-history exports that cover the fiat on-ramp side.

5. Practical checklist

• Record the AUD value at the time of every buy, sell, swap and mint — retrofitting this later is the painful part.
• Keep venue statements/emails (the venue may not exist in five years — see Zora's sunset).
• Separate the collector question from the trader question early — it changes which regime applies.
• When in doubt, a registered tax agent beats a Discord thread.

Related: using NFT marketplaces from Australia covers on-ramps and venue selection; the fee explainer covers what the venues charge; the directory shows which venues are still operating.

Last reviewed: September 2026.