Crypto assets and tax: filing without mistakes
Two categories of assets that are not a taxable event, and how to report staking, airdrop, and DeFi income.
Crypto taxes in Austria have long ceased to be a grey area. Since 2022, they fall under the capital income category at a rate of 27.5% — the same rate that applies to equities and dividends. Errors in declarations now arise not from legal ambiguity, but from confusion over acquisition dates.
Two categories: old assets and new assets
Assets acquired before 1 March 2021 are classified as "old assets" (Altvermögen). The previous speculative holding period logic applies to them: a sale is not taxable after one year of ownership. Everything acquired later is "new assets" and is taxed at 27.5% regardless of how many years it was held.
This is precisely where the most costly confusion arises: the same coin may partly belong to old assets and partly to new assets. Without a clean transaction history, separating them retroactively is nearly impossible — and in that case, all assets are treated as new.
What does NOT constitute a taxable event
Exchanging one cryptocurrency for another does not create a taxable event: you do not declare the swap, but carry the acquisition cost over to the new asset. Tax arises upon conversion to fiat, upon payment for goods or services in crypto, and upon receipt of lending income.
The most common false confidence: "I didn't withdraw to euros, so nothing happened." Half the truth — and precisely the half that brings a letter in the post.
Staking, airdrops, mining
Staking rewards are not taxed at the moment of receipt — but their acquisition cost is zero, so the entire proceeds from their sale are subject to 27.5%. Airdrops follow the same logic. Mining, if it is regular and organised, constitutes a business activity with its own rules, not passive income.
Interest from lending and DeFi income are taxed as capital income at 27.5%. The complexity lies not in the rate, but in consolidating these accruals from multiple platforms into a single coherent report.
Three typical mistakes
The first is failing to file a return for a year in which there was only a loss: losses can be offset against other capital income in the same year, but only if they are declared. The second is relying on automatic tax withholding by Austrian providers without verifying whether all platforms do this. The third is keeping the transaction history solely within an exchange application that may shut down along with your records.
The practical tip that saves the most: once a quarter, export the full transaction history to a file and store it separately. At the time of filing, this is the difference between an evening's work and a week of reconstruction.
We handle filings for FOP and small companies — from a first EAR to Basispauschalierung. This rubric breaks down what the Finanzamt checks most often.