Wealthsimple is one of Canada’s most popular investing platforms, offering everything from stocks and ETFs to cryptocurrency trading. Its free filing tool, Wealthsimple Tax, lets Canadians complete a full personal tax return, including capital gains and losses from crypto, without leaving the platform.
But if you’re filing Wealthsimple crypto taxes and you also have trading records on Coinbase, Kraken, or Bitbuy, or on a closed account such as Binance, you need to bring all of that activity together into one accurate set of numbers before you can file. This guide walks through how to do exactly that: using cryptact to consolidate every exchange and wallet you use, following Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) rules, then entering the resulting figures into Wealthsimple Tax.
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Do You Need a Crypto Tax Calculator for Wealthsimple Tax?
Whether you need a dedicated crypto tax calculator for Wealthsimple Tax comes down to one question: did all of your crypto activity happen on Wealthsimple itself?
- Only Wealthsimple: When you’ve only ever traded crypto through Wealthsimple, Wealthsimple provides a Realized Gains and Losses report for your Wealthsimple Crypto account, which breaks down your proceeds and adjusted book cost for you. You can enter these manually, or import them from your Wealthsimple account, and since Wealthsimple has already done the calculation, you likely don’t need a separate calculator.
- Multiple exchanges or wallets: It is important to note that Wealthsimple Tax only provides reports for your Wealthsimple trading records, not for activity on other platforms. If you’ve also traded on other exchanges or moved assets to a self-custody wallet, you’ll need to consolidate everything to calculate an accurate Adjusted Cost Base (ACB), using the average cost method the CRA requires. This is where a crypto tax calculator like cryptact does the heavy lifting.
Can Wealthsimple Import Crypto from Other Exchanges?
Wealthsimple’s own “Crypto with other exchanges” tool can import data from many exchanges, and it’s free for accounts under 500 transactions in total (the limit applies per account, not per tax year). You’ll find it under Manage tax forms, where Wealthsimple Tax asks whether you bought or sold crypto outside of Wealthsimple and offers a one-click import for gains and losses:
But because it’s a general-purpose auto-import feature covering over 300 exchanges at once, it comes with a few well-documented limitations worth knowing about before you rely on it — whether you’re reconciling records from Wealthsimple and Coinbase, or activity from Ledger, MetaMask, Trezor, or Phantom:
Cost base can default to $0.
If the tool can’t trace where a coin originally came from, often because older transaction history wasn’t imported, it treats all of the sale proceeds as a taxable gain. This is a data-completeness issue rather than a bug, but it can meaningfully inflate what you owe.
Transfers between your own wallets can look like disposals.
Moving crypto from an exchange to a personal wallet like MetaMask or a Ledger device should be a non-taxable transfer, not a sale. When the system can’t match the withdrawal on one side with the deposit on the other, it may record a “disposal” and a fresh “acquisition” at market price instead — creating a gain or loss that never actually happened.
DeFi and staking activity often import as generic transactions.
Liquidity pool deposits, yield rewards, and token bridges can come through as plain “receive” or “send” events with no tax context, so they can be miscategorized or missed entirely unless someone reviews them manually.
Multi-exchange imports don’t always follow Canadian cost base rules by default.
Wealthsimple’s own help documentation notes that if you use a U.S.-based tracking tool, you need to confirm it calculates ACB (adjusted cost base) rather than FIFO or LIFO to stay compliant — a setting that’s easy to miss.
For anyone importing crypto from Coinbase, Binance, Kraken, or a wallet like Ledger or MetaMask into Wealthsimple Tax, it’s worth reconciling the import against a consolidated report rather than assuming it caught everything.
Prepare Your Crypto Tax Report with cryptact
cryptact is crypto tax software that supports Canadian tax rules, consolidating every exchange and wallet into a single CRA-compliant crypto tax report. Here’s how to generate yours:
- Sign up or log in to cryptact and sync every wallet, exchange, and blockchain you use — including Wealthsimple itself — via API or by uploading a CSV file.
- cryptact calculates your crypto taxes, including capital gains, losses, income, and expenses, using the average cost method required under CRA rules.
- Confirm all your transaction data has been added and any error flags have been resolved — calculations won’t be accurate until every warning is cleared. Contact cryptact support if you get stuck.
- Go to your account page and open the Transaction tab in the left-hand menu. Once your profits and losses calculation is complete, download your Summary Report from the Transaction page — this contains all the figures you will need for Wealthsimple Tax.
Enter Your Crypto Tax Report into Wealthsimple Tax
With your cryptact Summary Report ready, here’s how to report crypto on Wealthsimple Tax:
- Log in to Wealthsimple and start (or continue) your return for the relevant tax year.
- Complete the profile and income sections that apply to your situation. If your crypto disposals were made on account of business income rather than capital, look for the self-employment income section instead — the rest of this guide covers reporting crypto as a capital gain or loss, the more common scenario for individual investors.
- From Manage tax forms, search for and add the Capital Gains (or Losses) section to your return.
- Under the Dispositions table, add a row and select Crypto-assets from the Type dropdown, then choose the matching option (e.g., Cryptocurrency) from the Description dropdown.
- Fill in the following fields using your cryptact Summary Report:
- Proceeds — enter the amount shown as Proceeds from sales on your Summary Report.
- Cost base — enter the amount shown as Acquisition costs (Adjusted cost base) — this is your ACB.
- Expenses — enter the total from the expenses section of your Summary Report. If it shows $0.00, you can leave this field as is.
If your cryptact Summary Report shows income under categories like staking, mining, or bonus, and you’ve determined it isn’t business income, add it separately under the Other Investment Income section — selecting Investment (property) income as the Type and Cryptocurrency as the Description — using the total from your Summary Report’s income section.
- That’s it for the crypto-specific steps — complete the rest of your return as needed, then review and file.
Capital Gains vs. Crypto Income: Not the Same Thing
Wealthsimple Tax handles these in completely different sections, and mixing them up is one of the most common crypto filing errors.
| Type | Example | Taxable Inclusion | Where in Wealthsimple Tax |
| Capital gain | Selling or trading BTC at a profit | 50% | Capital Gains (or Losses) section |
| Crypto income | Airdrops, staking rewards | 100% | Other Investment Income section |
Learn more about Canadian crypto tax rules: Read our comprehensive guide (CPA-reviewed)
A Few Checks Before You File
Most crypto adjusted cost base mistakes in Canada come down to incomplete data rather than bad math. Watch for:
- Cross-check total proceeds against your exchange statements — if the figure doesn’t match what you traded or withdrew, something may have been missed
- Verify your ACB is within range — with average-cost, your per-unit ACB should sit somewhere between your highest and lowest purchase price for that asset
- Watch for the superficial loss rule — if you sold crypto at a loss and bought back the same asset within 30 days before or after the sale, and you (or an affiliated person) still hold it at the end of that period, the CRA will typically deny the loss
- Check T1135 if applicable — if the total cost of crypto held outside Canada exceeded C$100,000 at any point in the year (combined with other foreign property), you may need to file Form T1135. According to Wealthsimple’s help page, Wealthsimple Tax will generate this automatically once your crypto figures are entered correctly. To confirm whether you need to file a T1135, consult a tax professional.
cryptact vs Wealthsimple Tax
Wealthsimple’s own tax tool is a convenient starting point, and free for accounts under 500 transactions (the limit is per account, not per tax year). cryptact is purpose-built to solve the gaps that a general-purpose importer runs into:
- Cost base tracking: cryptact preserves ACB across wallet-to-wallet transfers year-round rather than resetting it at import time.
- CRA-specific calculation: gains, losses, and income are calculated using Canada’s required average cost method by default.
- DeFi and multi-chain support: staking, liquidity pools, and airdrops are categorized rather than dropped into generic transfer events.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can Wealthsimple Tax calculate crypto taxes?
Wealthsimple Tax includes a built-in import tool that can calculate proceeds and ACB automatically if you connect your exchanges directly, but the accuracy depends on whether your full transaction history was imported. If you’re entering figures manually — including numbers from a tool like cryptact — you need to determine your adjusted cost base yourself using the CRA’s mandatory average-cost method before entering anything into Wealthsimple Tax.
What information do I need before using Wealthsimple Tax for crypto?
At minimum: total proceeds of disposition in CAD, total adjusted cost base in CAD, and any deductible expenses. If you earn crypto income from staking or mining, you’ll also need the fair market value of that income separately — it’s reported under “Other Investment Income,” not capital gains. If you have transactions you’re unsure how to classify, it’s worth consulting a tax professional.
How is ACB calculated for crypto in Canada?
Canada requires the average-cost method: divide the total cost of all units held by the total number of units to get a per-unit average. This updates every time you acquire more of that asset. FIFO, LIFO, and specific identification are not permitted under CRA rules.
Can I aggregate crypto transactions into one entry in Wealthsimple Tax?
Yes. Under the Capital Gains (or Losses) section, you can enter a single combined figure for the year’s total proceeds and ACB rather than listing every disposition separately.
Does Wealthsimple Tax support cryptocurrency in Canada?
Yes — “Crypto-assets (cryptocurrency)” is a selectable property type within Wealthsimple Tax’s Capital Gains (or Losses) section, and the 50% inclusion rate is applied automatically. Wealthsimple Tax can also import transaction data directly from exchanges, but it does not reconcile activity across multiple exchanges or wallets on its own — which is why most filers with more than one platform prepare their figures with dedicated crypto tax software first.
Want more detail on how crypto is taxed in Canada overall? Check out our Canada Crypto Tax Guide (CPA-reviewed).
Summary
Wealthsimple Tax makes it possible to file a complete Canadian tax return, including crypto, without leaving the platform, and its built-in import is a genuinely useful starting point for pulling in exchange data. That said, once you’re juggling several wallets and exchanges, cost base tracking, wallet transfers, and DeFi activity are naturally harder to get exactly right, and small gaps can add up to a number that doesn’t quite reflect your actual gains.
For a complete Wealthsimple crypto filing, cryptact consolidates every wallet and exchange you use, including Wealthsimple, into one accurate calculation for your Canadian crypto taxes, using the average cost method the CRA requires, so you can enter one clear set of figures into your Wealthsimple Tax return with confidence.
