The OECD's Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework — CARF for short — extends the same automatic exchange-of-information principles that have applied to traditional bank accounts for years to crypto-assets. Over 70 jurisdictions have now committed to it, including most of the EU, the UK, Switzerland, Singapore, and the UAE, with due diligence and data collection already underway ahead of the first exchanges.
The practical effect is straightforward: crypto-asset service providers will collect the same kind of information banks already collect — tax residency, identity, ultimate beneficial ownership — and share it with tax authorities across borders, automatically.
What's worth understanding: CARF pays particular attention to assets held through companies, trusts, or other structures rather than directly by an individual. Where a structure was set up in a way that made the underlying beneficial owner hard to identify, that opacity is far less durable under CARF than it was under the frameworks that came before it.
What this means for clients: if crypto-assets sit inside a corporate or trust structure as part of a broader international profile, it's worth reviewing whether that structure was built with this level of transparency in mind. We're increasingly folding this into structure reviews for clients with mixed traditional and digital-asset holdings — not as a crypto specialism, but as part of making sure the overall picture holds up to the scrutiny banks and regulators now expect as standard.