Six European countries, including Germany and Greece, do not tax capital gains in cryptocurrencies. In contrast, others, such as Portugal and Denmark, have particularly high taxes.
For cryptocurrency holders who make money trading, the choice of country of residence can be of paramount importance. Indeed, there are strong differences between European countries (from 0% to 52%), where the average European tax rate is 15.4%.
As a reminder, if an investor makes a taxable sale (capital gain), he must declare this on his tax return. Among taxable transfers, we highlight transfers of cryptocurrencies for fiat currencies (for example, legal currencies such as the euro or dollar) or the purchase of a product or service using cryptocurrencies.
Six countries without taxes
Hello Safe has published a comparative table of tax rates in 27 European countries. It seems that six European countries do not tax capital gains in cryptocurrencies: Malta, Cyprus, Greece, Slovenia, Estonia and… especially the first economic power in Europe: Germany.
Other countries have tax regimes that can range from zero taxation to a higher tax rate (between 5% and 50%) depending on certain criteria (income, investor profile, etc.). In Belgium, for example, capital gains from the sale or purchase of cryptocurrencies will be taxed at 33% for an individual, while rates can increase up to 50% for professionals depending on the profits made.
In France, income for the year that is less than 305 euros is not taxed, but above this amount, taxation is subject (unless a progressive income tax scale is chosen) by the levy of a lump sum (PFU) (“flat fixed amount”). tax”) at a rate of 30%, i.e. 12.8% tax and 17.2% social security contributions. This also applies to capital losses: if the user lost money on the sale of cryptocurrency, this must also be declared. There have been some changes to this cryptocurrency tax regime in France since the beginning of January, and BFM Crypto published an article on the subject.
On the other hand, other European countries do not do this on a case by case basis and have much higher tax rates. These include Denmark (rates can range from 37% to 52.06%), Sweden (30%) and Portugal (28%), which have recently introduced this tax regime, which only applies to investors with cryptocurrencies for less than a year.