Crypto Tax by Country

How your crypto is taxed depends entirely on where you file. Capital gains rules, what counts as income, which cost-basis method applies, holding-period rules, and the forms you submit all change by country. Pick yours for a plain-English guide, and a tax report formatted to match.

This is general information, not tax advice. Crypto tax rules change and depend on your circumstances, check with a qualified tax professional or your local tax authority.

Why crypto tax is a country-by-country question

There is no single global crypto tax. The same trade can be a tax-free disposal in one country and a taxable capital gain in another, and the cost-basis method you must use is set by law, not by preference. Where you are tax resident, how long you held an asset, and whether an event counts as a disposal or as income all shift the result. That is why a report built for one country rarely fits another: the numbers are computed under different rules, on different forms, to different deadlines. A few examples of how much the rules diverge:

• United States, the IRS treats crypto as property. Disposals go on Form 8949 and Schedule D; income goes on Schedule 1 or Schedule C. Short-term and long-term gains are taxed differently depending on whether you held for more than 12 months. → US crypto tax guide
• United Kingdom, HMRC applies Section 104 pooling, plus same-day and 30-day matching rules, and you report gains on the Capital Gains Summary (SA108). → UK crypto tax guide
• Germany, crypto held for more than one year can be disposed of tax-free under §23 EStG; gains within a year may be taxable. → Germany crypto tax guide
• France, private investors are not taxed on crypto-to-crypto swaps at all; a taxable event arises when you convert to euros, spend crypto, or earn it. → France crypto tax guide
• Netherlands, there is generally no capital gains tax on crypto; instead your holdings are taxed as wealth, based on their value on a snapshot date. → Netherlands crypto tax guide

Capital gains versus income, and why the split matters

Almost every regime draws a line between two kinds of crypto taxation, and getting each transaction on the right side of that line is the single biggest driver of your bill. Capital gains arise when you dispose of an asset you hold, the gain is the proceeds minus your cost basis. Income arises when crypto arrives as a reward or a payment, and is usually valued at its fair market value on the day you receive it.

• Disposals (selling for fiat, swapping one coin for another, spending crypto, and in some countries gifting) are typically capital events. Whether a swap counts varies: it is a disposal in the US, UK, Spain, and Australia, but not in France for private investors.
• Receipts (staking rewards, mining, airdrops, interest, and crypto salary) are usually income at receipt. That same receipt value then becomes the cost basis for a later disposal, so it is taxed once as income and again only on the further gain.
• Rates differ by bucket. Many countries tax long-term gains more gently than income, or tax gains at a flat rate while income follows a progressive scale. A reward you misclassify as a gain (or the reverse) can be taxed at the wrong rate entirely.

A handful of regimes step outside this framework. The Netherlands taxes the value of your holdings as wealth rather than taxing individual trades. Spain and Italy layer a wealth or holdings tax on top of gains. Reading your own country's guide is the only reliable way to know which of these applies to you. → How crypto tax works, end to end

Which events are taxable, and which are not

A common and costly assumption is that tax only bites when you cash out to your bank account. In most countries it does not. The taxable moment is the disposal, and a disposal can happen without a single unit of fiat moving:

• Usually taxable: selling crypto for fiat, swapping one token for another, spending crypto on goods or services, and earning crypto as a reward or wage.
• Usually not taxable: buying crypto with fiat and holding it, and moving crypto between wallets you own (keep records that prove both wallets are yours).
• It depends: crypto-to-crypto swaps (a disposal in many countries, deferred in a few), gifts (tax-free to a spouse in some regimes, a taxable event in others), and DeFi actions like wrapping, lending, and providing liquidity, where treatment is often unsettled.

Because the crypto-to-crypto question alone can change a year's result dramatically, each country guide states plainly whether swaps are taxed where you file. → Crypto trading and tax · DeFi and tax

Holding-period rules can change everything

In many countries, how long you hold before you dispose decides not just the rate but whether there is any tax at all. The clock, and the reward for waiting, is set locally:

• Germany, hold for more than one year and a private disposal is generally tax-free under §23 EStG; sell within the year and the gain can be taxable.
• Portugal, gains on crypto held 365 days or more are generally exempt, while gains on crypto held less than a year are taxed.
• United States, gains on assets held more than 12 months are taxed at lower long-term rates than short-term gains, which are taxed as ordinary income.
• Australia, individuals holding a crypto asset for more than 12 months can qualify for a 50% discount on the capital gain.

Tracking the acquisition date of every lot is what makes these rules usable. A single coin bought across several purchases has several holding periods, and only precise per-lot dates let you tell the tax-free (or discounted) portion from the taxable one.

Cost basis is set by your country, not picked from a menu

When you dispose of only part of a holding you built up over many buys, your country's law decides *which* units you are treated as selling, and therefore what your gain is. CryptaTax supports 12 disposal methods under the hood, but you rarely choose one by hand: jurisdiction rules apply automatically.

• FIFO (first in, first out) is the required or default method in many countries, including Germany, Spain, and Portugal, and is the IRS default in the US.
• Section 104 pooling (United Kingdom) averages the cost across every unit of a token, then adds same-day and 30-day matching rules on top.
• Adjusted Cost Base (ACB) (Canada) also averages cost across your units, alongside a superficial-loss rule for quick repurchases.
• Portfolio-wide proportional methods (France) compute each disposal against the whole portfolio's value rather than a simple queue of lots.

Because the right method is a legal question rather than a setting to get right yourself, your numbers follow the law where you file. → Compare cost-basis methods

Wealth and holdings taxes: a different model entirely

Some countries tax what you *hold*, not only what you *sell*. If you are resident in one of these, a report that only lists disposals will miss part of your obligation:

• Netherlands, crypto is taxed as wealth under a savings-and-investments regime, based on the value of your holdings on a set date rather than your trades during the year.
• Italy, a small annual tax applies to the value of crypto held, declared alongside gains.
• Spain, holdings can count toward a regional wealth tax, and crypto held abroad above a threshold must be declared on a separate informational form.
• Switzerland, individual gains are often exempt while a cantonal wealth tax applies to holdings (see your own country guide for the specifics).

For these regimes, valuing your portfolio accurately on the right date matters as much as tracking any single trade, which is another reason a full, timestamped history is worth keeping.

DeFi, NFTs, and the harder cases

The rules were mostly written for buying and selling coins, so newer activity often sits in grey areas that vary by country. This is where good records matter most, because if treatment is unsettled you want to be able to show exactly what happened and when:

• DeFi, lending, borrowing, providing liquidity, and wrapping tokens can each be a disposal, income, or neither depending on the jurisdiction and the specifics. → DeFi and tax
• NFTs, buying, selling, and minting are generally capital events, but royalties and creator income are usually taxed as income. → NFTs and tax
• Airdrops and forks, often income at the value you receive them, which then sets the cost basis for a later sale. → Airdrops · Hard forks
• Lost, stolen, or worthless crypto, whether you can claim relief, and how, differs widely by country. → Lost and stolen crypto

Where your own country's guide flags an area as unsettled, treat that as a prompt to confirm the current position rather than a settled answer, the point of the guide is to show you which questions to ask.

What every country guide covers

Each guide answers the same core questions for that jurisdiction, in plain English, so you can move between countries and always find the same facts in the same place:

• Is crypto taxed here, and how, capital gains, income, or both.
• Which events are taxable, selling, swapping, spending, and earning.
• Which cost-basis method applies, set by local law and applied automatically.
• Holding-period and allowance rules, exemptions, discounts, and thresholds.
• Which forms you file, and how to produce them from your transaction history.
• Key dates, tax year and filing deadline.

How a country-ready report is built from your data

A crypto tax report is only as good as the transaction history behind it. The work is turning thousands of scattered on-chain and exchange events into a clean, priced, classified ledger, and then applying one country's rules to it. In practice that runs in a few stages:

1. Import. Connect exchanges by API or file, and add public wallet addresses across the chains you use, so every buy, sell, swap, transfer, and reward is pulled in.
2. Reconcile. Match transfers between your own accounts so they are not mistaken for disposals, and remove duplicates and spam tokens that would otherwise distort the numbers.
3. Price and classify. Value each transaction in your home currency at the time it happened, and label it as a disposal, a transfer, or income.
4. Apply the rules. Run your country's cost-basis method, holding-period tests, allowances, and thresholds over the classified ledger.
5. Export. Produce the figures and forms your tax authority expects, ready to file or to hand to your accountant.

CryptaTax does each of these steps for you. Import your full history from 90+ chains and your exchanges, apply your country's rules, and generate a report formatted to file. → See how crypto tax reports are produced

What to gather before you file

Filing goes faster, and holds up better if questions ever come, when your records are complete before you start. A good history to aim for includes:

• Every exchange account you have used, including ones you no longer trade on, exported by API or CSV.
• Every wallet address, across each blockchain, so on-chain activity is captured alongside exchange trades.
• Transfers between your own accounts, so internal moves are not double-counted as disposals.
• Rewards and income events, staking, mining, airdrops, interest, and crypto pay, with the date and value at receipt.
• Prior-year cost basis, if you are switching tools mid-history, so gains are not overstated from a zero starting point.

Common cross-border situations

Crypto rarely respects borders, but tax residence does. A few situations come up often enough to flag:

• You moved countries during the year. Where you were tax resident when each disposal happened usually governs it, split years can mean filing under two sets of rules.
• You use foreign exchanges. Several countries require a separate declaration of crypto accounts or holdings held abroad, on top of reporting gains.
• Exchanges now report to tax authorities. Frameworks that share crypto account data with tax offices are rolling out, so keeping your own records reconciled to what platforms report matters more than ever.
• You are unsure of your residency. Because residency drives everything above, confirm it before relying on any single country's guide.

From transaction history to a country-ready report

Pick your country for the guide, then let CryptaTax do the maths. Import your full history from 90+ chains and your exchanges, apply your country's rules, and generate a report formatted to file or hand to your accountant. If you want to explore the numbers first, the calculator gives you an estimate before you commit.

• [Crypto tax calculator](/en/crypto-tax-calculator/), estimate your gains and income before you file.
• [Crypto tax guide](/en/crypto-tax-guide/), how crypto tax works, end to end.
• [Crypto tax reports](/en/crypto-tax-reports/), the country-specific forms and exports.
• [Staking rewards and tax](/en/crypto-tax-guide/staking/), how rewards are valued and reported.
• [Airdrops and tax](/en/crypto-tax-guide/airdrops/), when a free token becomes taxable income.

Pricing is per tax year: $0 Free, $79, $129, $249, and $449, pick the tier that matches your transaction volume.