How to declare crypto on your ITR12 in SARS eFiling

So you have your crypto tax report in hand, and now it is time to actually put the numbers on your ITR12. This is the part most people put off. The good news is that declaring crypto in SARS eFiling is mostly about knowing which section each figure belongs in, and having workings you can stand behind if SARS asks. Here is how to do it, start to finish, for Filing Season 2026.

Before you open eFiling: what you need in hand

Before you log in, get everything in one place. eFiling does not do the crypto maths for you, so you are transferring figures you have already worked out. Here is what that means in practice.

• 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 defend, with the base cost and the proceeds behind each disposal.

If pulling all of that together sounds like the hard part, it usually is. A Coinfig report gives you the capital gains summary, the income breakdown, and the transaction schedule behind them, so the figures you type into eFiling already have workings attached.

Step 1: decide (or confirm) capital vs 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 were trading actively, buying and selling often with the aim of short-term profit, SARS is more likely to treat your profits as revenue. Revenue profits get added to your taxable income in full at your marginal rate, with no annual exclusion to soften them.

SARS makes this call case by case, weighing your intention when you bought, how often you traded, how long you held, and how you ran the activity. There is no fixed holding period that settles it. The crypto tax guide walks through the intent test in more detail. If your situation sits on the line between investor and trader, this is exactly the kind of judgment worth putting to a tax practitioner before you file, not after.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.

It is worth reading each wizard question slowly rather than clicking straight through. If you answer no to the capital gains question out of habit, the section you need never appears, and it becomes very easy to leave crypto off the return without noticing. Take the questions at face value and answer them for your actual situation.

Step 3: the capital gains section

In the capital gains section you are not entering every trade line by line. You are entering the aggregate for the year: your total proceeds from crypto disposals, and the total base cost behind them. Base cost is generally what you paid to acquire the crypto plus allowable costs. The difference between the two is your capital gain or loss for the year.

A few things matter in this section.

• 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.

One thing people forget: if you also sold shares or property during the year, those share the same annual exclusion. Your crypto is not getting its own R40,000 on top.

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.

Staking rewards, mining income, and airdrops are included in your gross income at their rand value on the day you received them. That holds even if you never sold the coins. You received something of value, so it counts. That same rand value then becomes the base cost when you later dispose of those coins, which keeps you from being taxed twice on the same amount.

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: the auto-assessment caveat

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.

Do not leave it to the last week. If your crypto history needs cleaning up, and it usually does, you want time to sort out the reconciliation ahead of the deadline, not on the night.

After filing

Once you have filed, hold on to your records. SARS can ask you to support the numbers on assessment or audit, which means your transaction history, your rand values, your base cost, and the calculation method you used. The standard retention period is five years from filing, and longer if a dispute or audit is running. If a query comes back three years from now, those workings still need to exist.

This is where a clean report earns its keep. Coinfig turns your exchange, wallet, and CSV history into a South Africa-focused crypto tax report, with the capital gains summary, transaction schedules, and income breakdown laid out so your accountant or SARS can follow how each figure was reached. The free plan covers a full report for up to 100 transactions. It connects read-only to Luno, VALR, and Kraken, and takes CSV imports from anywhere else, and read-only means it can never trade or move your funds.

Worth being plain about one thing: Coinfig does the calculating and the reporting, then hands you a report to file. It does not submit your return and it does not give tax advice. You, or your practitioner, stay in charge of what actually goes 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.