German crypto tax reform: without a receipt, half the sale price is taxed

Anyone who sells their coins and cannot prove the purchase price will in future have to pay tax on half the sale proceeds. This substitute assessment appears in the German Federal Ministry of Finance's draft bill on the "Act to reform the taxation of certain crypto assets held as private assets", and it is the point that has so far been lost in the debate about the one-year holding period. The cabinet is due to approve the draft on October 14, 2026. Associations and law firms may submit comments until October 6, 2026.

For you this means two things. Your current holdings stay protected if you bought them by December 31, 2026. And from 2027 your purchase receipts become a document whose loss carries a price you can put a figure on.

Substitute assessment: 50 percent of the sale proceeds as the tax base

A substitute tax base is a value that the law applies when the actual value cannot be established. That is exactly what the draft provides the 50 percent rule for: if the exchange does not know the date of acquisition and the acquisition cost, the taxable gain is assessed at 50 percent of the entire sale proceeds. That is how the analysis by the specialist portal Der Betrieb of September 14, 2026 describes it.

A worked example makes the spread visible. If you sell coins for 10,000 euros and bought them for 9,000 euros, your real gain is 1,000 euros. Without proof, the substitute assessment assumes a gain of 5,000 euros. At a tax rate of 25 percent, around 1,000 euros separate those two cases.

The comparison with equities puts the severity in context. For securities, a substitute assessment of 30 percent of the proceeds has applied for years when the bank does not know the acquisition data. At 50 percent, the crypto draft sits above that. The tax advisory firm GTKP expressly highlighted this difference on September 15, 2026.

The reach of the rule matters: the substitute assessment is not a final verdict on your tax burden. It determines what the exchange withholds. You can claim the real acquisition cost in your tax return and recover tax paid in excess. But you then have to be able to prove it, and the burden of proof lies with you. Which documents the tax office may demand in an audit is something the tax administration has set out in its cooperation obligations; missing records count against you.

Exchange crypto asset: which coins the draft covers

The draft works with a new term. Under the definition, which follows the EU regulation MiCAR, an "exchange crypto asset" is a crypto asset that is accepted as a means of exchange and that no central bank has issued or guaranteed. What is meant first and foremost is Bitcoin and Ether.

This delimitation is more than terminological housekeeping. It decides which positions in your portfolio fall under the new regime and which continue to be treated under the old rules. For tokens that clearly qualify as securities or as payment tokens with a central bank link, the draft does not apply. Where exactly the line runs for smaller altcoins, stablecoins and tokenised products is something the draft does not yet work out sharply, in the assessment of both specialist sources.

From Section 23 to Section 20 of the Income Tax Act: 25 percent flat tax instead of your income tax rate

Today, gains from the sale of crypto assets are private disposal transactions under Section 23 (1) no. 2 of the German Income Tax Act. From that follows the familiar one-year deadline: after twelve months of holding, the gain is tax free. Below that, it is charged at your personal income tax rate, which can reach up to 45 percent.

The draft moves these gains to Section 20 (2) sentence 1 no. 9 of the Income Tax Act, that is, into income from capital assets. There the flat-rate withholding tax of 25 percent applies, plus the solidarity surcharge, and church tax on top where you are liable for it. The holding period no longer plays any part. In the wording of Der Betrieb, a gain would be taxable even after five, ten or twenty years.

Whether that works out cheaper or more expensive for you depends on two figures: your marginal tax rate and your actual holding period. An investor on a high income who trades within a year will pay less in future. A long-term holder who could sell tax free until now loses an advantage that hardly any other EU country offers in this form.

Grandfathering: the cut-off date of December 31, 2026 separates two tax worlds

The draft only applies going forward. Crypto assets that you acquire by December 31, 2026 remain under the old law with the one-year holding period. For everything you acquire from January 1, 2027, the new regime applies. GTKP summarises the mechanism as meaning that grandfathering preserves the old one-year deadline rather than replacing it: your legacy holdings keep their tax exemption after twelve months permanently, even if you do not sell them until 2030.

That creates a dividing line in every portfolio. Two Bitcoin positions bought a day apart can be subject to different tax rules. Which position you sell therefore becomes a question with tax consequences, and the order of disposal cannot simply be asserted at will. This is where a clean transaction history pays off; the tools in our comparison of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers carry exactly this allocation and document it in an auditable way.

Airdrops and gifts: acquisition cost of zero euros

For crypto assets acquired free of charge, the draft sets the acquisition cost at zero euros. Both specialist sources name this point. The consequence is arithmetically plain and economically substantial: if you later sell an airdrop for 2,000 euros, the entire amount is a taxable gain, because there is no acquisition value to set against it. A holding period that would defuse the transaction does not exist in the new regime.

It is not only airdrops in the narrow sense that are affected. Tokens from reward programmes, forks and allocations without consideration also fall into this logic, insofar as they are exchange crypto assets. Anyone taking part in distributions regularly is therefore building a position that becomes fully taxable on sale.

Wallet deposits: where the gap in the proof arises

The substitute assessment does not hit the majority of cases. If you buy on an exchange, leave the coins there and sell them there, the exchange knows the date and the price. In cases of doubt the draft also allows the platform to rely on your own information, as long as it has no contradictory data.

It gets tight in a transaction that is everyday business in this industry: a deposit from your own wallet or from another exchange. The receiving platform then sees an incoming transfer with no history. It does not know when the coins came into being or what they cost. It is precisely in this gap that the 50 percent rule bites, and GTKP names the wallet deposit as the typical application.

In practice that means the more often your coins have moved between wallets and platforms, the more important a continuous chain of records becomes. Anyone switching exchanges in the process should secure the old provider's transaction exports before access ends. After an account closure, that export is usually no longer retrievable.

Staking and lending: Section 20 (1) no. 12 of the Income Tax Act and the new holding

The draft assigns income from lending and passive staking to capital income under Section 20 (1) no. 12 of the Income Tax Act. Lending describes the interest-bearing loan of coins, passive staking the participation in securing the network without running a validator of your own. Both are therefore treated like interest income.

On top of that comes a consequence that is easily overlooked. Rewards received after December 31, 2026 count as a newly acquired holding. They do not inherit the grandfathering of the coins they arose from. So anyone who keeps staking a protected legacy position is continuously building new, unprotected positions alongside it. GTKP points out that the draft does not yet regulate the timing of such rewards on legacy holdings precisely.

Two loss worlds without a bridge: old and new holdings kept apart

Losses from legacy holdings remain losses under Section 23 of the Income Tax Act. They can only be offset against gains from private disposal transactions. Losses from new holdings move into the world of Section 20 and can be offset there against other capital income. According to Der Betrieb's account, the draft contains no transitional provision connecting the two pots. The loss carry-back is dropped.

For practical purposes this is an unresolved point. Anyone who has built up loss carry-forwards under Section 23 over years and from 2027 only realises gains under the new regime might no longer be able to use those carry-forwards. Whether the legislature will improve on this is open; it is one of the points the associations' submissions are likely to target.

The timetable: comment deadline October 6, cabinet October 14

The Federal Ministry of Finance has sent the draft bill to the associations. Comments are possible until October 6, 2026. The cabinet decision is scheduled for October 14, 2026. After that comes the parliamentary procedure with the Bundestag and the Bundesrat.

A draft bill is a ministry's working version and not yet a law. Between a cabinet decision and promulgation, drafts change regularly, and individual parameters such as the level of the substitute assessment or the treatment of the loss pots are typical places where that happens. Today you can treat only the direction as settled, not every figure.

Tax withheld by the exchange only from 2028: the year 2027 you declare yourself

The substantive rules are due to take effect on January 1, 2027. Under the draft, automatic tax withholding by the platforms only begins on January 1, 2028. In between lies a year in which the new rules apply but the withholding is not yet running: gains from 2027 belong in your tax return.

This transitional year is the period with the greatest scope for error. The tax liability exists regardless of the holding period, no automatic payment over takes place, and you have to keep track of the allocation between protected legacy holdings and new holdings yourself. Running in parallel is the reporting obligation under DAC8, through which German platforms pass their users' data to the tax administration anyway. Your data set and the tax office's should match up in that year.

Crypto tax reform: how to proceed now

1. Pull your records together and secure them. From every exchange and broker you use or have used, download the complete transaction export and secure it outside the platform. For keeping track of the acquisition date and acquisition cost on an ongoing basis, the applications from our comparison of crypto tax software are suitable, because they link incoming deposits from outside with their history.
2. Go through your wallet deposits. Work through the incoming transfers that landed on an exchange without a purchase history. Those are the positions where the 50 percent substitute assessment would bite. If a record is missing there, now is the moment to reconstruct it from old account or mail archives; which providers deliver solid transaction reports is shown by our overview of crypto exchanges.
3. Keep the cut-off date in view. Whatever you acquire by December 31, 2026 keeps the old one-year deadline. Whether you bring purchases forward because of it is a decision about your investment and not about tax alone; how a regular purchase is documented for tax purposes is shown by our savings plan comparison.

(As of October 1, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Sources on the draft bill: Der Betrieb on the tax reform for exchange crypto assets and the assessment by the tax advisory firm GTKP.