Crypto Capital Gains Tax: Rates, Calculations & Forms (2026)

Crypto capital gains tax is based on your net gain, holding period, taxable income and filing status. For 2026, net long-term crypto gains generally use the 0%, 15% or 20% federal capital-gains rates, while net short-term gains are taxed at ordinary income rates of 10% to 37%. The 3.8% Net Investment Income Tax and state tax may also apply. This US guide includes the current brackets, a calculator, worked examples and the forms used to report a disposal.

So what is the tax rate on crypto gains? The single biggest lever is your holding period. Hold a coin for more than a year before you sell, and you unlock the preferential long-term rates, often roughly half what you’d otherwise pay. Sell inside a year, and your gain is taxed at the same rate as your paycheck. The IRS treats crypto as property under Notice 2014-21, so these are the same capital gains rules that apply to stocks. If you want the full mechanics of why each transaction is taxed, start with our guide on how crypto is taxed. Here, we’re focused on the numbers.

What Determines Your Crypto Tax Rate?

Three factors decide the percentage you pay:

• Holding period. One year or less is short-term; more than one year is long-term. This is the difference between ordinary rates and preferential rates.
• Total taxable income. Your other income (wages, business, interest) decides which bracket your crypto gain lands in. Crypto doesn’t get its own separate rate; it stacks on top of everything else.
• How you got the crypto. A capital gain from selling is taxed differently than crypto you earned from staking or mining, which is ordinary income from the moment you receive it.

Get those three straight and the rest is just reading the right table.

How to Calculate Capital Gains Tax on Crypto

Start with each taxable disposal: selling crypto for dollars, trading one token for another, spending crypto, or otherwise giving up ownership. Subtract the disposed units’ adjusted cost basis—including eligible acquisition costs—from their proceeds. Then separate short-term results from long-term results and net gains and losses under the capital-loss rules before applying a tax rate.

• Step 1: calculate proceeds minus adjusted cost basis for every disposal.
• Step 2: classify each result as short-term or long-term using the holding period.
• Step 3: net capital gains and losses, then apply the rate determined by taxable income and filing status.
• Step 4: report the transactions on Form 8949 and carry the totals to Schedule D.

Example. You sell Bitcoin for $30,000. The specific units sold had a $20,000 adjusted cost basis, producing a $10,000 capital gain. If you held them for eight months, the net gain is short-term and taxed at ordinary rates. If you held them for more than one year, the net gain generally falls into the 0%, 15% or 20% long-term system. Your other income determines which bracket applies.

Crypto Tax Rate Calculator

Plug in your numbers to see what a crypto gain would actually cost you, side by side, at short-term versus long-term rates. Enter your other taxable income and your estimated crypto gain (or a loss, using a minus sign), then hit calculate.

What is the short-term crypto tax rate?

If you sell, trade, or spend crypto you’ve held for one year or less, your gain is a short-term capital gain. There’s no special rate here. It’s taxed at your ordinary income tax rate, the same brackets that apply to your salary. For 2026, those range from 10% to 37%.

2026 rate	Single filer	Married filing jointly
10%	$0 to $12,400	$0 to $24,800
12%	$12,401 to $50,400	$24,801 to $100,800
22%	$50,401 to $105,700	$100,801 to $211,400
24%	$105,701 to $201,775	$211,401 to $403,550
32%	$201,776 to $256,225	$403,551 to $512,450
35%	$256,226 to $640,600	$512,451 to $768,700
37%	Over $640,600	Over $768,700

Remember these are marginal brackets. You don’t pay one flat rate on everything. Each slice of income is taxed at its own bracket’s rate, so a short-term crypto gain is taxed at the rate that applies to the top of your income, not your whole income.

Example. Mike earns $90,000 in salary and makes $20,000 trading crypto he held for five months. That $20,000 short-term gain stacks on top of his salary, landing in the 22% bracket, so he owes roughly $4,400 in federal tax on it. Had he held that same position past the one-year mark, he’d likely owe $3,000 (15%) instead.

What is the long-term crypto tax rate?

This is where the real savings live. Hold your crypto for more than one year before disposing of it, and your gain qualifies for the long-term capital gains rates: 0%, 15%, or 20%. The exact crypto tax percentage you pay depends on your total taxable income and filing status.

2026 long-term rate	Single	Married filing jointly	Head of household	Married filing separately
0%	Up to $49,450	Up to $98,900	Up to $66,200	Up to $49,450
15%	$49,451 to $545,500	$98,901 to $613,700	$66,201 to $579,600	$49,451 to $306,850
20%	Over $545,500	Over $613,700	Over $579,600	Over $306,850

Notice that 0% bracket. If your total taxable income is low enough in a given year, a chunk of your long-term crypto gains can be taxed at zero percent at the federal level. That’s not a loophole; it’s how the brackets are designed, and it’s one of the most powerful (and most overlooked) planning tools for crypto holders with flexible income.

Example. Sarah earns $80,000 and sells Bitcoin held 18 months for a $40,000 long-term gain. Even though her salary sits in the 22% ordinary bracket, her long-term gain is taxed at just 15%, so she pays $6,000 instead of the $8,800 a short-term gain would have cost. Same profit, $2,800 saved, purely from the calendar.

Do you owe the 3.8% Net Investment Income Tax on crypto?

Here’s a rate almost nobody mentions until they get the bill. If your modified adjusted gross income passes $200,000 (single) or $250,000 (married filing jointly), you may owe an additional 3.8% Net Investment Income Tax (NIIT) on your crypto gains, on top of the capital gains rate above. That can push a high earner’s effective long-term rate from 20% to 23.8%. It applies to both short- and long-term gains, so factor it in if you’re a high earner sitting on large positions.

How Crypto Income Is Taxed (Mining, Staking, Airdrops, Wages)

Not all crypto is a capital gain. When you earn crypto, it’s ordinary income taxed at fair market value the day you receive it, using the same 10% to 37% brackets in the short-term table above. This covers:

• Mining and staking rewards, taxed as income when you gain control of the coins.
• Airdrops and hard-fork coins, taxed once you have dominion and control.
• Crypto wages, treated as W-2 income with normal withholding.
• Mining as a business, which also owes the 15.3% self-employment tax on top of income tax.

Then there’s the double-tax catch: when you later sell coins you earned, you owe capital gains tax on any growth between when you received them and when you sold. One coin, two taxable events at two different rates.

Do You Pay State Tax on Crypto?

Federal rates are only part of the picture. Most states tax crypto gains as regular income too, and there’s no special long-term rate at the state level in most places. That means your real, all-in crypto tax rate is your federal rate plus your state rate.

• No state income tax: states like Florida, Texas, Washington, Wyoming, and Nevada don’t tax crypto gains at the state level at all.
• High-tax states: California, for example, taxes crypto gains as ordinary income at rates up to 13.3%, stacked on top of your federal bill.

If you’re planning a large sale, where you live can change your total rate by ten percentage points or more.

What is your crypto tax rate by income level?

Putting it together, here’s roughly what a long-term crypto gain costs at different income levels in 2026 (single filer, federal only):

Your taxable income	Long-term crypto rate	Short-term crypto rate
$40,000	0%	12%
$70,000	15%	22%
$150,000	15%	24%
$300,000	15% + 3.8% NIIT	35% + 3.8% NIIT
$700,000	20% + 3.8% NIIT	37% + 3.8% NIIT

The pattern is hard to miss: at almost every income level, holding past a year cuts your rate dramatically. The gap between the short-term and long-term column is the tax you’re choosing to pay (or not) based on when you sell.

How Your Cost Basis Method Changes the Rate You Actually Pay

There’s a second lever beyond holding period, and it’s the one people leave on the table. When you’ve bought the same coin at different prices, the cost basis method you use decides how big your taxable gain is, which decides how much of it gets taxed and at what rate.

• FIFO (first in, first out) sells your oldest coins first, often the cheapest, which tends to maximize your gain.
• HIFO (highest in, first out) sells your most expensive coins first, shrinking the gain.
• Specific identification lets you hand-pick the exact lot for the best result.

From our own caseload. Across 398 client cases we reviewed over six tax years, 64.8% had their capital gains overstated in at least one prior year, meaning they’d been taxed on a bigger number than they legally owed. In the cases where we were able to legally reduce a client’s gains below their tax software’s defaults, that reduction averaged between $17,205 and $25,733, depending on the platform and tax year. The headline tax rate is fixed by law. The taxable number it gets applied to is not.

For 2026 the IRS requires wallet-by-wallet basis tracking rather than one universal pool, so clean records are what make a lower-gain method defensible.

How to Pay a Lower Crypto Tax Rate (Legally)

You can’t change the brackets, but you can change which one you land in:

• Hold for more than a year to move from ordinary rates into the 0%/15%/20% long-term bracket. This is the single biggest move.
• Harvest your losses to offset gains dollar for dollar; net losses also cut up to $3,000 of ordinary income per year, with the rest carrying forward. See our guide to crypto tax loss harvesting.
• Time your sales for a low-income year to capture the 0% long-term rate.
• Choose the right cost basis method and keep records that back it up.
• Consider where you live before a large disposal, since state rates stack on federal.

When you’re ready to actually put these numbers on a return, our step-by-step guide on how to file crypto taxes walks through the exact forms.

When the Rate Isn’t the Whole Story

Knowing your crypto tax rate is the easy part. The hard part is calculating the gain it applies to, especially across multiple wallets, DeFi, NFTs, or a few years of messy records. That’s where the real money is won or lost, because the wrong cost basis or a transfer mistaken for a sale can inflate your taxable gain by thousands before any rate is even applied. At Crypto Tax Made Easy we reconstruct transaction histories from on-chain data, apply basis methods that legally minimize the taxable number, and clean up prior years so the rate you pay is the rate you actually owe. If your situation is past the spreadsheet stage, talk to a crypto accountant.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much do I get taxed on crypto?

It depends on how long you held and your total income. Profits on crypto held more than a year are taxed at long-term capital gains rates of 0%, 15%, or 20%. Profits on crypto held a year or less, plus any crypto you earned from mining, staking, or wages, are taxed at your ordinary income rate of 10% to 37%. High earners may also owe an extra 3.8% Net Investment Income Tax.

How much tax will I pay on crypto profits?

For a long-term gain, multiply your profit by 0%, 15%, or 20% depending on your taxable income. For a short-term gain, it’s taxed at your marginal income tax rate. For example, a $10,000 long-term gain for someone in the 15% bracket means $1,500 in federal tax, while the same gain held under a year could cost $2,200 to $3,700 depending on your bracket.

How much capital gains tax on $300,000?

A $300,000 long-term crypto gain for a single filer in 2026 would be taxed mostly at 15%, plus the 3.8% Net Investment Income Tax once your income passes $200,000, for an effective rate around 18.8%, roughly $56,400 federal. If it were a short-term gain, it would be taxed at ordinary rates up to 35% plus NIIT. Your exact figure depends on your other income and filing status.

What is the short-term crypto tax rate?

Short-term crypto gains (assets held one year or less) are taxed at your ordinary income tax rate, which ranges from 10% to 37% in 2026 depending on your total taxable income. There is no preferential rate for short-term gains.

Do you pay taxes on crypto before withdrawal?

You owe tax when you dispose of crypto, not when you withdraw cash to your bank. Selling, trading one coin for another, or spending crypto are all taxable events even if you never move dollars to your bank account. Simply withdrawing your own fiat after a sale doesn’t create a separate tax.

How can I avoid a high crypto tax rate?

The most reliable way is to hold for more than a year so your gains qualify for the lower long-term rates, then harvest losses to offset gains and time sales for lower-income years. There’s no legal way to pay zero on a large taxable gain, but choosing the right cost basis method and holding period can cut your rate substantially.

About the author and reviewer

Matt Walrath

Founder of Crypto Tax Made Easy. Matt has worked in crypto tax since 2017, leading reconciliation work across DeFi, cost basis cleanup, exchange tax forms, and tax software reviews. CTME has reconciled 6.7M+ transactions for 1,410+ investors, and Matt has appeared with Binance and spoken at the Australia Crypto Convention.

Michael Bergloff, CPA, MST

US tax reviewer for CTME content that includes IRS or state tax implications. Michael reviews US tax treatment, reporting, and compliance references.

Disclaimer: The information provided by Crypto Tax Made Easy is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute professional, financial, accounting, or tax advice. Consult a qualified professional about your specific situation.