Crypto tax lawyer: when you need one and what they do

Crypto tax attorney or crypto tax accountant: how to tell

The rule is simple: while the question is "how much do I owe", an accountant is the right person; the moment it becomes "what happens to me for this" or "how do I challenge it", you need a lawyer. The second reason to instruct a lawyer is privilege: communications with a lawyer are protected from disclosure, communications with an accountant generally are not.

What clients come to us with

• A letter or audit from the tax authority about crypto transactions — responses, representation, negotiating instalment terms.
• Unreported years — voluntary disclosure, working out the least painful route.
• Relocation and a change of tax residency with a crypto portfolio — exit tax, how cost basis is fixed.
• Classification disputes: staking, DeFi and airdrops, where the revenue authority's position is arguable.
• Structuring: holding company, fund or personal ownership — with the tax consequences of each model set out.

How the work and the fees are structured

The initial assessment is free: we look at the documents and set out the risks and the options. After that it is either a fixed fee for a defined scope (a response to a letter, a disclosure package) or an hourly rate for disputes. No percentage "of the tax saved": that model rewards promising the impossible.

What a lawyer changes that an accountant cannot

The practical difference is legal professional privilege: what you tell your lawyer while seeking legal advice is protected from disclosure, while your correspondence with an accountant generally is not — and in a dispute that distinction decides what ends up in the authority’s file. It matters most in exactly the situations crypto holders face: a voluntary disclosure of unreported years, an audit that has moved from questions to a proposed assessment, or any matter with a criminal-referral risk, where national tax-crime units (in the US, IRS Criminal Investigation) apply a willfulness standard to decide between penalties and prosecution.

The technical layer still has to be right: the cost-basis method (FIFO, LIFO or specific identification, where your jurisdiction allows a choice) can change the outcome by a wide margin, and cross-border facts bring tax residency, double-taxation treaties and exit-tax rules into play. Tax authorities increasingly obtain exchange data wholesale rather than case-by-case — the US John Doe summons against exchanges is the best-known example — so the working assumption should be that the transaction history is already visible.

The question we get most often is ‘can’t my accountant just handle this’. Usually yes, right up until the letter changes tone — from a request for clarification to a proposed assessment with a penalty attached. At that point what you say to your accountant isn’t protected, and it can end up in the file. We get called in earlier than people expect precisely because of that.

Mark Eichorn · Managing Partner