Hong Kong's Legislative Council passed a crypto tax-reporting bill on Nov. 4, 2026, giving the city's digital-asset service providers a fixed timeline for collecting customer information and sharing it with overseas tax authorities. Covered crypto providers must start gathering user information on Jan. 1, 2027, and the Inland Revenue Department will begin exchanging that data with partner jurisdictions in 2028.

The measure, formally titled the Inland Revenue (Amendment) (Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework and Amended Common Reporting Standard) Bill 2026, was gazetted on May 22, 2026, and received its first reading on June 3, 2026. The legislation extends Hong Kong's automatic tax information exchange regime — built on reporting standards developed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) — to crypto-asset service providers. With the Nov. 4 vote, crypto customers in the city are set to have their trading details collected for tax purposes from the beginning of 2027. In practical terms, that means account and transaction details held by local platforms will be passed to the tax authorities of the jurisdictions where users are tax resident.

What Information Providers Will Collect

The Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework, known as CARF, establishes due diligence and annual reporting obligations for crypto service providers. Under the framework, providers gather the required information and report it to the tax authority each year.

The required data includes identifying details, tax residence information, and aggregated transaction information. Before they can prepare their reports, providers must first identify which of their users are tax residents of reportable jurisdictions.

The rules also cover controlling persons of entity users, such as companies. These individuals, too, are identified by their tax residence in reportable jurisdictions.

The framework is designed around tax transparency rather than tax collection: it does not set any individual user's tax bill.

Covered providers include businesses that exchange crypto for fiat currency, or one cryptocurrency for another, on behalf of customers. The category spans counterparties, intermediaries, and trading platform operators. A provider's specific duties depend on its link to a jurisdiction under the framework's nexus rules. Operationally, the new obligations place crypto businesses on footing similar to the due-diligence and annual reporting routines that banks and other financial institutions already follow under the city's existing exchange regime.

The bill's passage was noted on X by the account Block Tax:

🇭🇰 Hong Kong: Block Tax Alert 🚨 LegCo passes CARF crypto-reporting bill Hong Kong's Legislative Council passed the Inland Revenue (Amendment) (Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework and Amended Common Reporting Standard) Bill 2026 on 4 November. The law will require relevant… — Block Tax (@CryptoTaxG) November 5, 2026

A Second Timeline for Financial Accounts

The same bill also updates the Common Reporting Standard, or CRS, which governs financial account information. The amended standard takes effect on Jan. 1, 2028, with exchanges beginning in 2029. That schedule runs separately from the crypto timeline, meaning a single law now sets two distinct reporting calendars.

Hong Kong has shared financial account data since its first automatic exchange law passed on June 22, 2016. That system requires financial institutions to identify accounts held by tax residents of reportable jurisdictions and report them every year. Account holders may be asked to provide self-certifications, including their tax residence. For individuals, tax residence generally depends on physical presence, such as staying more than 183 days in a tax year.

The list of reportable jurisdictions grew from 75 in 2017 to 126 as of Jan. 1, 2020. In a separate change, an amendment ordinance on automatic exchange was gazetted on June 26, 2026, and comes into operation on Jan. 1, 2027.

In December 2024, Hong Kong said it planned to finish the legislative changes by 2026 and begin crypto information exchanges in 2028. The Nov. 4 vote completes that legislative step before the first collection year.

Hong Kong says the exchanges will be reciprocal, and they will be subject to confidentiality and security safeguards. Reciprocity means data can move in both directions — out to partner jurisdictions and into Hong Kong.

Implementation and Support

The Inland Revenue Department has set up a dedicated team to provide technical support and answer industry questions, and it plans to issue guidance on the new rules. Details on the city's automatic exchange regime are published on the department's official website. The department will also build a CARF reporting portal and publish the data schema that defines the reporting format, and it says more details will follow before providers begin collecting data in 2027. Those forthcoming releases — the guidance, the portal, and the data schema — are the concrete milestones to watch as the Jan. 1, 2027 collection start approaches.

Source: CoinCentral