Crypto tax spreadsheet template: a ledger with the right columns

A free spreadsheet template for tracking crypto transactions with the columns a tax report actually needs. Fill in your buys, sells, swaps and income, and you have a clean, orderly record, the same shape of data any calculation, or accountant, works from. Download the XLSX and start with the example rows.

General information, not tax advice. Crypto tax rules differ by country and change over time, verify against your country's guidance or a qualified advisor.

What is in the template

One sheet, one row per transaction, and the columns a disposal calculation depends on. The example rows show a buy, a sell, a crypto-to-crypto swap and a staking-income receipt, so you can see how each type is recorded before you replace them with your own.

How to use each column

• Date, when the transaction happened, so events sort chronologically and holding periods can be worked out.
• Type, what it was: buy, sell, swap, transfer, or an income type such as staking, mining or airdrop.
• Asset and Amount, the coin and how much of it moved.
• Price (per unit) and Currency, the value of one unit in your home currency at the time, the basis for every calculation.
• Fee, the trading, network or gas fee, which adds to cost basis on a buy and reduces proceeds on a sell.
• Cost basis, what the units acquired cost you (price times amount, plus fees), carried forward until you dispose of them.
• Proceeds, what you received on a disposal, net of fees.
• Gain/Loss, proceeds minus cost basis on each disposal, the figure that flows into your capital-gains total.

The rules a spreadsheet cannot enforce

A template keeps your data tidy, but a few things still need care, and they are exactly where manual tracking tends to break down.

• Transfers between your own wallets are not sales, record them so basis follows the coins, rather than logging a disposal on one side.
• A crypto-to-crypto swap is usually two events, a disposal of the coin you give up and an acquisition of the coin you receive, each valued at the moment of the trade.
• Cost-basis method matters, when you have bought the same coin at different prices, which lot you are selling (FIFO, HIFO and so on) changes the gain; a flat spreadsheet does not decide this for you.
• Every value needs its date, income and swaps must be valued on the day they happened, not from memory later.

When a spreadsheet stops being enough

For a handful of trades on one exchange, this template is plenty. Add a second exchange, a wallet or two, transfers between them, fees and a few hundred transactions, and manual tracking starts to break down, with errors that stay invisible until they compound. That is the point at which a per-lot ledger, applied by software, is the difference between a number you can stand behind and one you merely hope is close. CryptaTax imports the same data automatically from your wallets and exchanges, matches transfers, and applies your cost-basis method consistently across the year.