In March 2026, the Federal Court ordered Binance Australia Derivatives to pay a A$10 million penalty after ASIC found it had wrongly classified 524 retail clients as wholesale investors. This gave those clients access to high risk crypto futures contracts without the protections available to retail investors. The case highlights that crypto futures trading carries significant regulatory requirements, alongside tax rules that many traders may overlook.
Unlike spot crypto, which is generally subject to capital gains tax, profits from crypto futures can be taxed as ordinary income, without the Capital Gains Tax (CGT) discount. The treatment depends on several factors, including whether you are investing or carrying on a business and whether the futures contract is settled in cash or involves delivery of the underlying crypto. This article will hence guide you on how crypto futures are taxed by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) for 2025-26 tax year.
Key Takeaways
- Futures trading profits can be taxed as ordinary income rather than capital gains.
- Whether you’re a trader or investor decides your tax treatment, not the contract size.
- Trader classification means no CGT discount, but losses may offset your other income.
- Cash-settled and physically-settled futures contracts are taxed differently in Australia.
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How Does The ATO Tax Crypto Futures Trading In Australia?
Unlike spot crypto, a futures contract doesn’t automatically default to capital gains tax. What you owe depends first on whether you’re trading as an investor or running something closer to a business, since each path leads to a completely different tax outcome from there.
Tax On Futures Trading Profits As An Investor
If your futures activity does not amount to a business or a profit making transaction, any gain or loss may instead fall under capital gains tax. However, the ATO is unlikely to view futures trading this way unless your activity is genuinely occasional, low skill and recreational.
This makes capital treatment relatively narrow, as futures contracts are typically designed for speculation over defined timeframes, which can point towards income rather than capital treatment.
Tax On Futures Trading Profits As A Trader
For most people who actively trade crypto futures, profits are treated as assessable income under section 6-5 of the ITAA 1997 and taxed at their full marginal tax rate, rather than receiving a CGT discount. If you make a loss, you can generally claim it as a deduction under section 8-1 instead of having it quarantined to offset only capital gains, which may provide a tax benefit in a losing year.
How Cash-Settled And Physically-Settled Futures Are Taxed Differently?
Not every futures contract gets taxed the same way, even once you know whether you’re a trader or an investor. Whether the contract settles in cash or in actual crypto changes the analysis, on top of the revenue-versus-capital question covered above.
Cash-Settled Futures
Cash-settled futures never deliver the underlying crypto, settling the price difference in cash or a stablecoin at expiry instead. Because there’s no delivered asset to hold, the result is commonly treated as ordinary income where the activity is a business operation or profit-making transaction, following the same reasoning the ATO applies to cash-settled financial contracts more broadly.
Physically-Settled Futures
A physically settled futures contract works differently. If the contract delivers Bitcoin (BTC) or Ethereum (ETH) to you when it expires, the crypto you receive becomes a CGT asset in its own right, with a cost base generally equal to the contract price. Any later sale or disposal of that crypto is then taxed under the ordinary crypto CGT rules covered elsewhere in this guide, separately from the tax treatment of the futures contract itself.
How To Calculate Tax On Crypto Futures Trading In Australia?
Calculating tax on a futures position starts with a distinction that does not usually apply to spot crypto. Your tax result is based on the contract’s notional value, rather than simply the margin you put up to open the position. From there, the tax treatment depends on whether the position is treated as being on revenue or capital account.
Step 1: Calculate Your Result From Notional Exposure
Your trading result is the exposure-weighted price movement, not a percentage of your margin deposit. A$1,000 of margin controlling a A$10,000 futures position via 10x leverage means a 5% price move produces a A$500 result, not a A$50 one.
Trading Result = Notional Contract Value × % Price Movement
Step 2: Adjust For Fees And Settlement
Add or subtract any fees and settlement adjustments that occurred while the position was open. Some exchange PnL exports already net these in, so check whether you’re working from gross or net figures before you calculate anything further.
Net Result = Trading Result − Fees ± Settlement Adjustments
Step 3: Apply Revenue Or Capital Treatment
If the result is on revenue account, the full amount is assessable income or a deductible loss, with no CGT discount available regardless of how long the position was open. If it’s on capital account instead, the standard 12-month discount rule applies exactly as it would to any other crypto CGT asset.
Revenue Account: Assessable Income = Net Result (no discount)
Capital Account: Discounted Gain = Net Result × 50% (only if held 12+ months)
Real-Life Scenario
A trader on the ATO’s own community forum described a common scenario: they buy 1 BTC, transfer it to Binance, place multiple active trades over a week on the BTC-USDT futures instrument, and end up with 0.1 BTC of profit, for 1.1 BTC total. Their question was whether that 0.1 BTC is taxable in the year it’s generated, or only when it’s eventually sold.
The ATO’s specific reply to that thread wasn’t something I could retrieve, so the calculation below is my own application of the ATO’s revenue-account reasoning to the scenario, not a quote of the forum’s actual answer.
Assumptions
To keep the calculation simple, we’ll use the following figures:
- Starting position: 1 BTC transferred to Binance
- Trading activity: Multiple active BTC-USDT futures trades over one week
- Realised profit: 0.1 BTC
- BTC price when the trades closed out: A$80,000
- BTC price if later sold (one month on): A$81,000
We’re using active, repeated trading over a short window because that’s exactly what the trader described, this isn’t a single occasional trade, which is what pushes the activity toward a revenue account in the first place.
Step 1: Calculate Tax On The Futures Profit At Realisation
Active, repeated futures trading using leverage to speculate on price movement, without ever taking delivery of BTC, points toward a revenue account under section 6-5. The 0.1 BTC profit is assessable in the year the trades closed out, valued in Australian dollars at that time.
Assessable Income = 0.1 BTC × A$80,000 = A$8,000
This A$8,000 is taxed as ordinary income at the trader’s marginal rate for that year, regardless of whether they go on to hold, spend, or sell the resulting BTC.
Step 2: Calculate Any Further Tax If The BTC Is Later Sold
Holding onto the 0.1 BTC afterward doesn’t defer the tax on the trading profit itself. It starts a fresh CGT cost base, using the value already taxed as income.
Cost Base = A$8,000 (the value already declared as trading income)
If the trader sells that 0.1 BTC a month later at A$81,000:
Capital Gain = A$8,100 (Sale Price) − A$8,000 (Cost Base) = A$100
That A$100 is a separate, small capital gain, taxed on top of the A$8,000 already assessed as income. No CGT discount applies, since the BTC was held for weeks rather than the 12 months required.
How To Report Crypto Futures Trading Income In Australia?
How you report crypto futures income in Australia depends on how the ATO classifies your trading activity. If your futures profits are treated as assessable income, you will report them differently from gains treated as capital. The classification determines which part of your tax return you use and, in some cases, which tax form you need to complete.
Keep The Data for Exports From Every Platform
Keep every raw export from each platform you trade futures on, rather than relying on a dashboard summary. For each position, preserve:
- Position history: Entry and exit prices, dates, and contract details.
- Settlement records: Cash settlement amounts or, for physically-settled contracts, the crypto delivered and its value on that date.
- Fee records: Trading fees, and any other costs charged by the platform.
- Expiry dates: When each contract closed out, whether by expiry or an earlier voluntary close.
Summaries can net these figures together in ways that obscure what actually happened, so the raw export matters more here than it does for simple spot trades.
Report Revenue Account Results As Income
How this gets filed depends on how your trading is structured:
- As an individual without an Australian Business Number (ABN), net profit goes under “other income” in myTax, at Personalise return, with any deductible losses claimed against it in the same section.
- As a sole trader with an ABN, report it through the business income and expenses section instead, using the same figures your business records already show.
- Lodging on paper, business income goes on the Business and professional items schedule attached to your return, not the Supplementary tax return’s capital gains item.
This sits entirely separately from any capital gains section, even if you also hold spot crypto elsewhere in your portfolio.
Report Capital Account Results As Capital Gains
If your futures activity is on a capital account, report the gains or losses in the capital gains section of your tax return, just as you would for other crypto CGT events. In Personalise return, select the option for income or losses from investments or property.
Then, under Prepare return, enter your total current year capital gains and net capital gain, applying the 12 month CGT discount where you are eligible. If your total capital gains exceed A$10,000 for the year, you must also complete the capital gains tax schedule. You cannot treat the same futures activity as both revenue and capital account within the same financial year.
Note: Whether recurring futures trading tips you into needing an ABN, and whether GST registration applies, depends on the scale and regularity of the activity rather than anything specific to crypto. Where that line sits is worth checking with a registered tax agent if your trading is frequent enough to feel businesslike.
How Can KoinX Help With Crypto Futures Trading Tax in Australia?
Separating notional contract value from margin, and working out whether a result belongs on revenue or capital account, is exactly the kind of reconciliation that gets unmanageable by hand. KoinX pulls your transaction history from 800+ exchange, wallets and blockchains together so the underlying transaction data is ready, whichever classification applies to your futures trading.
Crypto Derivatives Summary In The Complete Tax Report
The Complete Tax Report includes a dedicated summary of income from crypto derivatives, covering total realised profit, total realised losses, fees paid, and your net result across every futures trade for the year, alongside a full transaction-by-transaction breakdown of each trade’s date, asset, size and outcome. It sits in the same report as your capital gains summary, so futures results and any spot disposals are ready side by side rather than reconciled separately.
Free Crypto Tax Calculator
Before committing to a paid report, KoinX’s free crypto tax calculator for Australia gives you a quick estimate of your spot crypto position. It’s a useful starting point for the capital gains side of your portfolio while you work through the revenue-versus-capital question for your futures activity separately.
If you’re trading crypto futures alongside spot holdings, connecting your exchanges to KoinX keeps your capital gains organised while you work out the revenue side. Get started with KoinX and bring your full crypto activity into one place.
Conclusion
Crypto futures do not follow the same tax treatment as spot crypto in Australia. Whether your profits are treated as assessable income or capital gains depends on the nature of your trading activity and how the contract settles. Getting this classification right matters because it determines your tax rate, how you report the income and how you can treat any losses. As the ATO’s guidance in this area continues to develop, it is worth confirming a genuinely borderline position with a registered tax agent rather than making assumptions.
Once you have established the correct tax treatment, reporting your futures activity becomes much more straightforward. If you also trade spot crypto, KoinX can help keep your crypto transactions and capital gains organised in one place while you handle the income side of your futures trading. Join KoinX today and bring your full crypto activity together.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can Crypto Futures Trading Ever Qualify For The CGT Discount?
Yes, potentially, if your trading genuinely doesn’t amount to a business or profit-making transaction. This is a narrow category, since futures contracts are built for speculation over defined timeframes, which points toward revenue treatment rather than capital. Occasional, low-skill, recreational use is the closest fit for this path.
Does It Matter If My Futures Contract Is Cash-Settled Or Physically-Settled?
Yes, it matters. A cash-settled contract never delivers the underlying crypto, so there’s no CGT asset to hold. A physically-settled contract that actually delivers BTC or ETH on expiry creates a CGT asset at that point, with a cost base equal to the contract price, taxed separately under ordinary crypto CGT rules from there.
How Is My Futures Trading Result Calculated If I'm Using Leverage?
It’s the exposure-weighted value of the position, not your margin deposit. A$1,000 of margin controlling a A$10,000 position through 10x leverage means your profit or loss is calculated on the full A$10,000 exposure, not on the A$1,000 you actually put up to open the trade.
Are Losses From Crypto Futures Trading Treated The Same As Capital Losses?
Losses on revenue accounts are deductible under section 8-1, meaning they can offset your other income, not just capital gains. Losses on capital account are quarantined the same way as any other crypto capital loss, only usable against capital gains, either this year or carried forward to a future year.
