Bloomberg: Tokenized Assets Can Fall Outside Crypto Reporting, OECD Says
“Tokenized instruments held the possibility of falling under both CARF and the common reporting standard, or CRS, the long-standing reporting regime for traditional financial institutions. The new guidance clarifies that these instruments will instead fall under CRS, eliminating the risk of dual reporting.”
A digitally issued or tokenized financial asset doesn’t qualify as a crypto asset if it can “be held by and transferred through custodial accounts” maintained by traditional financial institutions and where they can’t be transferred in a decentralized manner, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said in an updated Frequently Asked Questions, which act as guidance for countries.
The OECD-led Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework, or CARF, will facilitate global information exchange on digital assets across more than 50 countries starting in 2027, with crypto exchanges in participating jurisdictions required to begin collecting data in 2026.
Industry participants had urged the OECD to exclude tokenized assets, which uses blockchain technology to represent real-world or digital assets such as stocks and bonds, issued by traditional financial institutions—an area that has seen “massive adoption” in recent years.
The OECD cryptoasset reporting framework will likely influence similar U.S. federal and state efforts:
- Walter Hellerstein & Andrew Appleby, A State Tax Perspective on Proposed Federal Cryptoasset Guidance, 118 Tax Notes State 539 (2025)
- Andrew Appleby, Taxing Tokens, 91 Tenn. L. Rev. 321 (2024)
