Once you have calculated your crypto gains and income, you need to enter them in the relevant sections of your ITR12. Keep the supporting calculations in case SARS asks for them. This guide covers the steps for Filing Season 2026.
Prepare your records before opening eFiling
eFiling does not calculate your crypto results from transaction records. Prepare the figures before you log in.
- Your full transaction history from every exchange and wallet you used during the year, including any accounts you have since closed.
- The rand value of each transaction at the time it happened, because SARS wants everything in rand, not in Bitcoin or dollars.
- A capital gains calculation if you held crypto as an investment, or an income calculation if you were trading.
- Totals you can support, with the base cost and the proceeds behind each disposal.
A Coinfig report provides capital gains summaries, income breakdowns, and the transaction schedules behind them.
Step 1: confirm capital or revenue treatment
Before you touch the return, be clear on how your crypto is taxed, because that changes which part of the ITR12 you complete.
If you bought crypto to hold as a long-term investment and later sold, swapped, or spent it, your gain is likely capital in nature. That goes through the capital gains part of the return, where the annual exclusion and the 40% inclusion rate apply.
If you trade frequently for short-term profit, SARS is more likely to treat the profits as revenue. Revenue profits form part of taxable income in full and are taxed at your marginal rate. The capital gains annual exclusion does not apply.
SARS considers your intention when buying, trading frequency, holding period, and how you conduct the activity. No fixed holding period settles the classification. The crypto tax guide explains the intent test. If you are unsure whether your activity is investing or trading, ask a tax practitioner before filing.
Step 2: the return wizard
When you open your ITR12 in eFiling, the return starts with a wizard. It asks a series of yes or no questions about your income and circumstances, and your answers decide which sections open up on the actual return.
Two answers matter for crypto:
- If you disposed of crypto you held as an investment, answer yes to the question about capital gains or losses on the disposal of assets. That opens the capital gains section.
- If your crypto profits are revenue in nature from trading, you declare them in the local business and trading income part of the return instead, so make sure the wizard opens that section for you.
Read each wizard question and answer for your circumstances. If you answer no to the capital gains question, that section will not appear.
Step 3: the capital gains section
Enter your annual crypto disposal totals in the capital gains section, rather than each trade. You need total proceeds and total base cost. Base cost generally includes what you paid for the crypto and allowable costs. The difference is your capital gain or loss.
Apply the capital gains rules to those totals.
- The annual exclusion applies once across all your capital assets together, not separately for crypto. For the 2026 year of assessment, the one you are filing now, that exclusion is R40,000. Budget 2026 raised it to R50,000, but that increase lands on the 2027 year of assessment, which you file next season.
- After the exclusion, 40% of your net capital gain is added to your taxable income and taxed at your marginal rate. For individuals that works out to a maximum effective rate of 18%.
- If your crypto disposals produced a net capital loss, you do not lose it. It carries forward as an assessed capital loss and offsets capital gains in future years. It does not reduce your ordinary income.
Shares and property disposals use the same annual exclusion as crypto.
Step 4: crypto earned as income
Selling and swapping are not the only taxable events. If you earned crypto during the year, that is income, and it is taxed differently from a capital gain.
Include staking rewards, mining income, and airdrops received for a task or service in gross income at their rand value on receipt, even if you keep the coins. That value becomes the base cost for a later disposal. A fortuitous airdrop received without doing work usually has different treatment and is taxed on disposal. The linked post explains the distinction.
This income belongs in the income part of your return, separate from the capital gains section above. For a fuller breakdown of how earned crypto is treated, see staking, mining, and airdrops.
Step 5: check your auto-assessment
Plenty of taxpayers got an auto-assessment notice between 1 and 12 July 2026. If you were one of them, read this before you accept anything.
Auto-assessments are built from third-party data that SARS already holds, mostly from employers, banks, and retirement funds. Crypto activity is generally not in that data. So an auto-assessment can come back looking clean and complete while quietly ignoring every crypto disposal you made all year.
Accepting that assessment does not make you compliant. It just means you have agreed to a return that left out gains and income you were meant to declare. If you had any crypto activity during the year, do not accept the auto-assessment as it stands. Go in, review it, add your crypto figures, and file the corrected return.
Deadlines for filing season 2026
Which deadline applies to you depends on whether you are a provisional taxpayer. Frequent crypto trading profits often push people into provisional status, so if you were trading, check which row you fall under.
| Taxpayer type | Filing window |
|---|---|
| Non-provisional individuals | 13 July to 23 October 2026 |
| Provisional taxpayers | 13 July 2026 to 22 January 2027 |
Allow time before the deadline to obtain missing records and reconcile transfers.
After filing
Keep your transaction history, rand valuations, base-cost records, and calculation method after filing. SARS can request them during an assessment or audit. The standard retention period is five years from filing, and longer if a dispute or audit is running.
Coinfig produces South African crypto tax reports with capital gains summaries, transaction schedules, and income breakdowns. For an exchange connection, create an API key in your Luno, VALR, or Kraken account with read-only permissions and keep trading and withdrawal permissions disabled. It also accepts CSV imports from anywhere else.
A full report for up to 100 transactions is free when you sign in through a trusted partner. Otherwise, reports start on Starter.
Coinfig calculates and produces reports. It does not submit your return or give tax advice. You or your practitioner decide what to include on the ITR12.
This article is general information, not tax advice. Crypto tax outcomes depend on your specific circumstances. For complex situations, consult a qualified tax practitioner.