Since 1 January 2026, the tax authorities see more.
Not because anyone has opened a new register. But because an existing system has been extended: the automatic exchange of financial account information. Internationally it is known as the Common Reporting Standard, CRS for short.
With the turn of the year a new version applies, CRS 2.0 for short. On top of that comes an entirely new reporting system for cryptoassets. In the EU both run through a directive known as DAC8. Outside the EU, the United Kingdom has written the same two standards into its own law.
What they contain affects you if you hold an account abroad, own cryptoassets or use e-money. And it affects you if you want to know how far the transparency of wealth in Europe already reaches. The wider context of the plans for an asset register is set out on our page on the EU asset register.
What applies from 1 January 2026
Directive (EU) 2023/2226 obliges every member state to apply its implementing rules from 1 January 2026. It brings two major changes.
First: providers of crypto services become subject to reporting. Exchanges, brokers, custodians. They must identify their customers and report their transactions to the tax authorities. The directive takes a very broad view of cryptoassets. Stablecoins, e-money tokens and certain non-fungible tokens are covered as well.
Second: the existing account exchange is brought into line with the new version of the OECD standard. The directive expressly names the inclusion of e-money and central bank digital currency.
Then there is a technical point with a large effect. The tax identification number becomes ever more important, so that the authorities can match the reported data against their own databases. The directive says so openly: it improves member states' ability to identify the taxpayers concerned.
The directive binds every member state, including Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. It does not bind the United Kingdom, which has its own rules.
The United Kingdom: the same standards in domestic law
The UK left the EU before DAC8 was adopted. It has implemented the two OECD standards itself, on the same start date.
The heart of it is the Cryptoasset Reporting Framework, CARF. According to HMRC's guidance, the rules sit in the Reporting Cryptoasset Service Providers (Due Diligence and Reporting Requirements) Regulations 2025.
What crypto providers now have to do
The obligations apply for the first time to the calendar year 2026.
Providers must collect data on all their users and verify it. For an individual that means, according to HMRC, name, date of birth, home address and country of residence. For UK residents, the National Insurance number or Unique Taxpayer Reference. For everyone else, the tax identification number and the country that issued it. Providers report once a year by 31 May for the previous year. The first report covers 1 January to 31 December 2026 and is due by 31 May 2027.
One point deserves particular attention. What happens if you do not supply the information requested?
The regulations attach a price to it. Anyone who fails to give a valid self-certification to the provider, deliberately or through a failure to take reasonable care, is liable to a penalty of up to £300. The provider itself faces up to £300 for each user from whom it fails to collect a valid self-certification. HMRC's overview of penalties lists both.
Put simply: the obligation runs through your own service provider. It is the provider that asks, and the provider that reports.
What exactly is reported
For each transaction, the provider records the value, the type of cryptoasset, the type of transaction and the number of units. HMRC receives the user's details and a summary of their transactions.
The decisive point is who is covered. According to HMRC, providers report users who are tax resident in the UK or in another country that has signed up to CARF. The UK has deliberately included its own residents. HMRC thus holds the data of every UK taxpayer using a UK-based provider, not only that of foreigners.
Structures do not make anyone invisible
Anyone holding cryptoassets through a company or foundation should know one further detail. Alongside the user, the rules know the controlling person. For entity users such as companies, partnerships and trusts, the provider collects the entity's details and, for some entities, those of the person who controls it.
Putting a company in between changes little about the report. Structures therefore serve a different purpose: not concealment, but protection from access.
What changes in the account exchange
The UK's account exchange has been updated as well. According to HMRC's manual, from 1 January 2026 an entity that holds specified electronic money products or central bank digital currencies on behalf of a customer counts as a depository institution under CRS 2.0.
HMRC defines both. An e-money product is one issued on receipt of funds for the purpose of making payment transactions; a product created solely to transfer funds is excluded, unless the money stays there longer than 60 days after the instruction. A central bank digital currency is a digital fiat currency issued by a central bank.
Central bank money is the interesting part. There is no digital euro yet, and no digital pound. But its capture for tax purposes is already written into the rules. Anyone who later holds digital currency with a provider in another country may fall within the account exchange. The rule is in place before the first digital unit has been issued.
Switzerland: accounts yes, crypto not for now
Switzerland is not an EU member. DAC8 does not apply there. But Switzerland implements the extended OECD standard itself.
The Federal Council approved the relevant ordinance on 26 November 2025. According to the Federal Department of Finance, the act and ordinance were to enter into force on 1 January 2026. The changes cover the updated standard for financial accounts and the new reporting framework for cryptoassets.
On the crypto side there has been a turn. On 3 November 2025, the Economic Affairs Committee of the National Council decided not to apply the crypto reporting framework with any partner state for the time being. It is thus anchored in law but will be implemented in 2027 at the earliest. The Federal Council decided that the crypto provisions will not apply in 2026.
A further change concerns foundations directly. Associations, foundations and their accounts will in future be directly subject to the reporting standard. Under certain conditions they can be exempt from the exchange. The ordinance governs which.
On 20 October 2025 Switzerland signed a protocol amending its agreement with the EU on the exchange of information. It brings the agreement into line with the revised standard and adds mutual assistance in recovering VAT claims. The parties intend to examine within four years whether that assistance is to be extended to other tax claims.
The timetable
So that you can place the sequence, here is the order.
Since 1 January 2026, providers in the EU and in the UK have been collecting the data. Anyone who becomes a new customer must give the self-certification. During 2026 the transactions run into the providers' records.
By 31 May 2027, UK providers report the year 2026 to HMRC. The report therefore concerns not only foreigners, but also you as a resident with a provider in your own country. Data on users in other countries goes to their authorities, insofar as exchanges with those countries take place. The first international exchanges are planned for 2027.
Switzerland is out for now on cryptoassets. On financial accounts it is in, and under the extended standard.
For you this means: 2026 is the first year that ends up in the reports in full. What you buy, sell or transfer with a regulated provider in 2026 will appear in a report in 2027.
Transparency is not the same as access
Now to the real question. What does this mean for your wealth?
First, a sober observation. The automatic exchange of information is not an asset register. It reports accounts, balances, income, transactions. To the tax authority of the country where you live. It creates no list on which everything you own appears.
But it grows. With every version, new categories are added. First bank accounts. Then securities accounts. Now cryptoassets, e-money and central bank digital currency. In parallel, states collect other data: land registers, beneficial ownership registers, bank account registers, census data.
Each of these collections has its own purpose. Taken together, they produce a picture that no state had of its citizens twenty years ago. Whoever has this picture needs no new register for a levy on wealth. They only need to link the existing ones. The tax identification number is the key to that. The directive itself says what it is for.
What this means for how you are set up
The most important consequence is uncomfortable but clear: hiding is not a strategy. It never was. Since 1 January 2026, for cryptoassets held with regulated providers in the EU and the UK, it is technically over as well.
Asset protection therefore starts at a different point. Not with the question of whether the state knows something. But with the question of whether it can get at it.
An account in another jurisdiction is reported. But an order from the authorities at home does not take effect there of its own accord. Capital controls, a moratorium, a levy on balances: measures of this kind take hold first in the home banking system. Which jurisdictions outside the EU come into question for accounts is set out on the page on non-EU bank accounts. The reasoning behind our focus outside the EU is explained under why outside the EU.
The same principle applies to cryptoassets. What sits with a regulated provider is reported and, if it comes to it, can be frozen. Which other risks cryptoassets carry, from regulation to custody, is described on the page on crypto.
And property in any case stands in the land register. It does not get more transparent than that. Here, too, protection cannot come from nobody looking.
The direction of legislation is unambiguous. More data, more linking, more purposes. Anyone who aligns their wealth with this no longer asks who knows something. They ask who can get at it in an emergency, and who cannot.
Postscript (as of 23 September 2026)
Since the post, on 24 June 2026, the Swiss Federal Council adopted the dispatch on the amending protocol with the EU and sent it to Parliament (business 26.059). According to the dispatch, the provisions on the exchange of information under the revised OECD standard have been applied provisionally since 1 January 2026. The new assistance in recovering VAT claims does not yet apply; it depends on approval by Parliament. The business lies with the competent committee, and the Council of States deliberates first. We follow the current state of asset recording in Europe on the page on the EU asset register.