Investors struggle to file crypto taxes as CARF expands global reporting

Beincrypto reports that digital asset users are increasingly raising concerns about filing crypto taxes as on-chain activity and multi-chain trading volumes grow. The IRS treats digital assets as property, so gains are taxable when assets are sold, swapped, or spent and income taxes apply to staking, airdrops and similar receipts; simply holding crypto is not a taxable event.

For the 2025 tax year the standard IRS filing deadline is April 15, 2026, with an extension to October 15, 2026 allowed for filing only. Investors and tax services say reconciling thousands of transactions across centralized and decentralized exchanges, bridges, liquidity pools, derivatives platforms and multiple wallets creates calculation errors and heavy manual work.

“The scary thing is, the burden of proof falls on the taxpayer to refute their low effort position…So if you don’t keep accurate records, you could get screwed,” a crypto tax service wrote, and one user reported executing more than 17,000 transactions in 2025 and choosing to pay tax on bank withdrawals rather than calculate gains — a step the user estimated could overpay by $15,000 to $30,000.

Key Topics

Crypto, Carf, Irs, Centralized Exchanges, Decentralized Exchanges, High-frequency Trading