Do I have to report crypto if I never sold anything?
In most reporting systems the obligation attaches to holding the property, not to disposing of it. A year in which you bought nothing, sold nothing and simply left a balance sitting on a foreign platform can still be a reporting year. The disposal question and the reporting question are separate: one decides whether there is tax to pay, the other decides whether a form is due. So work out the reporting position for every year you held the account, not only the years in which you traded. A quiet year is the easiest one to miss and the easiest one to prepare, because the balance and its cost are the only facts needed.
Is crypto on a foreign exchange counted as foreign property?
Usually the question is not asked about the coin at all. A token on a public ledger has no obvious location, so reporting regimes look instead at the arrangement you hold: an account with a platform incorporated somewhere, governed by that platform's terms, with the platform holding the keys. Characterised that way, the holding looks like property held with a foreign institution, and the coin's own placelessness stops being relevant. The first document to read is therefore not a wallet screen but the account agreement, which normally names the contracting entity and the law that governs it.
Does a hardware wallet count as held with a foreign institution?
Self-custody is treated differently from custodial holdings in several systems, and the reason is structural rather than technical. With a hardware wallet there is no counterparty holding anything for you: no account, no institution, no terms of service. Rules written around foreign accounts and foreign custodians may not reach it, while rules written around foreign property more broadly may still do so. Two people with identical balances can land in different places purely on who holds the keys. Record which coins sat in self-custody and which sat with a platform, because that split is the fact the analysis turns on and it is hard to reconstruct later.
How do I find out where my crypto exchange is based?
The website footer is not the answer. Platforms commonly operate through several entities, and the one you actually contracted with is named in the terms you accepted when the account opened, often a different company in a different jurisdiction from the brand. Deeper still, some platforms disclose that client assets sit with a named third-party custodian elsewhere again. Keep the terms in force for each year you held the account, together with any notice of a change of contracting entity. Those documents, not the marketing pages, are what support the position you take and what an examiner will ask to see.
Which exchange records do I need before filing?
Ask the platform for a full transaction export, a year-end statement of balances, and the deposit and withdrawal history including the wallet addresses used. The addresses matter, because they are what let a movement between your own accounts be identified as a transfer rather than a sale. Add the account-opening terms and anything the platform says about which entity holds the assets. Download all of it while the account is live. Access to historic statements ends when a platform leaves a market or shuts down, and a position you cannot document is a position you may have to abandon.
My crypto exchange has closed, what about my reporting?
The obligation does not disappear with the platform. What changes is the evidence available to you, so the work becomes reconstruction: chain records of deposits and withdrawals to and from the addresses the platform used, trade confirmations recovered from old email, bank entries for currency movements, and any statement you saved. From those you can usually rebuild balances and cost with a trail behind each figure. Write down the method you used and its limits, and keep the working papers with the filing. A reconstructed figure supported by a documented method is treated very differently from one that simply appears.
Which country do I pay tax to first?
Generally the source country — where the income arises — taxes first, often by withholding before you receive it. Your country of residence then taxes the same income and credits what the source country took. That order is why timing matters: a residence-country return filed before the source-country tax is settled has nothing to credit yet. Getting the sequence right is most of the work. See international tax planning.
Do Canada and the United States share tax information?
Yes, through more than one channel. The treaty has an exchange-of-information article that supports both routine and on-request exchange. Separately, an intergovernmental agreement has Canadian financial institutions identify US-reportable accounts and report them to the CRA, which passes them to the IRS, with the reverse flow for Canadian residents. Most other country pairs use the Common Reporting Standard for the same purpose. See FATCA reporting.
