Last reviewed 2 September 2026 · Checked against the Excise Tax Act and CRA guidance · By the CryptoNorth Team
Someone buying and selling crypto for themselves. If you run a business that accepts crypto, mine commercially, or sell tokens that are not payment instruments, GST/HST registration and input tax credits come into play and this page does not cover them — that is an accountant conversation, not a comparison-site one.
No — not on buying or selling the crypto itself. Bitcoin, Ether and Litecoin are treated as “virtual payment instruments” under the Excise Tax Act, which makes trading them an exempt financial service. The CRA gives those three as examples that are generally accepted as virtual payment instruments — it is a definition a token has to meet, not a label that covers everything called a coin. In the CRA’s words, “GST/HST does not apply to the sale.”[1]
Two places it commonly does apply: when you spend crypto on taxable goods or services, and when the token is not a virtual payment instrument at all — NFTs being the obvious case.
This one is unusually clean for a crypto tax question, because Parliament wrote it into the statute rather than leaving it to interpretation. The logic runs in three steps.
The Excise Tax Act defines this as “property that is a digital representation of value, that functions as a medium of exchange and that only exists at a digital address of a publicly distributed ledger.” The CRA names Bitcoin, Ether and Litecoin as examples generally accepted as fitting it.
Paragraph (f.1) of the financial instrument definition is, in full, “a virtual payment instrument.” Parliament put it in the same list as shares, bonds and precious metals.
Dealing in a financial instrument is a financial service, and financial services are exempt. The CRA puts it plainly: the sale “is an exempt supply of a financial service.”
The practical upshot for an ordinary investor: no GST/HST on your purchases, none on your sales, and no reason to register for a GST/HST number merely because you buy and sell coins for yourself. Running a business is a different question, and the CRA’s own page opens by saying that depending on your activities you may have to register.[1][2]
Paying for something with crypto does not make that something tax-free. The exemption covers the coin, not the coffee. The CRA treats it as a barter transaction and taxes the goods or services in the normal way:
“When you exchange a taxable property or service for crypto-assets, you must calculate the GST/HST that applies to the property or service based on the fair market value of the crypto-assets at the time of the exchange.”[1]
A Toronto shop sells you a laptop and accepts Bitcoin. The Bitcoin you hand over is worth $2,000 at that moment. The shop charges 13% HST on $2,000 — $260 — exactly as if you had paid cash.
And on your side, spending that Bitcoin is a disposition for income tax. You have a capital gain or loss on it, separately from the sales tax. Two taxes, one transaction — see how disposals are calculated.
This matters far more to businesses accepting crypto than to individuals spending it. If you accept crypto as payment and you are a GST/HST registrant, you owe the tax on your sale in dollars, whatever your customer paid with.
The exemption is narrower than “crypto.” A token only qualifies if it is a medium of exchange existing on a public ledger, and the definition explicitly carves out property that:[2]
The CRA lists non-fungible tokens among the crypto-assets that may fall outside the definition. Where a token is not a virtual payment instrument, selling it is “likely a taxable sale of intangible personal property” — meaning a registrant has to collect GST/HST on it, and can generally claim input tax credits on related costs.[1]
Note the word “likely” — it is the CRA’s, not ours. Classification depends on the individual token’s terms, and an in-game currency, a rewards point and a governance token can land in different places. If you mint or trade NFTs at any scale, this is a question for a GST/HST specialist, not a comparison site.
Section 188.2 of the Excise Tax Act, effective 5 February 2022, deals with mining separately.[1] It covers validating transactions and adding them to a public ledger, maintaining that ledger, and supplying computing resources for either.[3]
Under it, providing a mining activity is deemed not to be a supply, and neither is the mining payment received.[3] The CRA’s summary of what that means in practice:
“Generally, a person engaged in mining activity is considered to not be engaged in commercial activity for GST/HST purposes.”[1]
Miners often read “no GST/HST to charge” as good news. It is not. The other half is that you generally cannot claim input tax credits on the tax you paid for rigs, hardware or electricity used in mining.[1] For an operation with serious power bills, losing the ITCs is the bigger number.
There are limited exceptions, mainly where mining is performed for a particular identifiable person rather than into an anonymous pool.[1] That is genuinely fact-specific and worth professional advice.
GST/HST and income tax are separate systems, and an exemption in one says nothing about the other. This trips people up constantly, so plainly:
For the ordinary Canadian buying and selling major coins, there is nothing to do here. No GST/HST on the trades, no registration, no filings. Trading the major coins is one of the few parts of Canadian crypto tax that rests on a definition written into the statute rather than an argument from analogy. The edges of this page — NFTs, mining, tokens that are not payment instruments — are considerably less tidy, and the sections below say so.
It gets complicated in three places only: businesses accepting crypto as payment, anyone dealing in NFTs or utility tokens, and miners — where the real story is lost input tax credits, not tax collected. Your income tax obligations are untouched by all of it.
Only if cost passed $100,000 and it is held outside Canada — usually not on a Canadian exchange.
No GST/HST, but yes for income tax — the CRA counts it as a disposition.
Canada uses average cost, not FIFO, and one coin is one pool across every wallet.
Brackets, the 50% inclusion rate, and why exchanges do not yet report your trades to the CRA.
This page is general information, not tax advice. We are not accountants. Whether a particular token is a virtual payment instrument depends on its own terms, and the mining rules have exceptions this page does not cover in full. If you run a business that accepts crypto, deal in NFTs, or mine at any scale, speak to a GST/HST specialist.
Our full Canadian crypto tax guide covers the 50% inclusion rate, adjusted cost base and the deadlines for the 2026 return.
Read the tax guide →