Germany's Crypto Holding Period Before the Petitions Committee on October 12: What Matters Now

On Monday, October 12, 2026, the petitions committee of the German Bundestag will debate the tax holding period for crypto assets in public from 12 noon. The sitting is not a closed deliberation: anyone who wants to attend can register until Friday, October 9, at 12 noon, and anyone who misses that can follow the date via livestream. Nothing is decided on that Monday. What happens there is nonetheless the last dated point at which something can move in public before the cabinet takes up the matter on October 14.

This article sorts out three things: what exactly is on the agenda on October 12, what petition 201716 demands, and what the planned cutoff date of December 31, 2026 means for holdings that already sit in a portfolio or in a self-custodied wallet today.

The petitions committee debates the crypto holding period on October 12 from 12 to 2 pm

The German Bundestag has set the date and published it itself. The petitions committee will deliberate two petitions in succession in a public committee sitting. At 12 noon the item in question is the one the agenda words as “income tax – preservation of the tax holding period for private disposals of crypto assets”. At 1 pm a second, substantively unrelated item on animal testing follows. The slot runs from 12 to 2 pm, which leaves around an hour for the crypto item.

The venue is committee room 3.101 in the Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus in Berlin. In the sitting, the petitioners have the opportunity to present their case briefly and to explain it in response to questions from committee members. The most important sentence of the announcement for investors is a different one: representatives of the federal government will be available to answer questions from members of parliament. The government therefore has to speak publicly and on the record about the holding period two days before its own cabinet session. All the details are set out in the petitions committee's announcement on bundestag.de.

Petition 201716: what 44,439 co-signatories demand of the Bundestag

The petition carries the number 201716 and calls for the one-year holding period for private disposals of crypto assets to be preserved. It is therefore aimed directly at the plan to tax gains on crypto assets in future regardless of how long they were held.

A public petition to the Bundestag needs a quorum, meaning a minimum number of co-signatures within the signing period, for the committee to deliberate it in a public sitting. That threshold stands at 30,000 signatures. According to BTC-ECHO, the quorum was reached a good day after public signing opened; the final count was 44,439 co-signatures. The petition text itself and the course of the discussion are hosted by the Bundestag on its portal for public petitions under number 201716.

The signing period closed on September 15. What would come next we left open in our article on the end of the signing period, because at the time the committee had not yet set a date. The Bundestag's announcement now closes that gap.

Holding period under Section 23 EStG: the classification in one sentence

The holding period is the span between acquisition and sale after which a gain on privately held assets remains tax-free. For crypto assets held privately it is one year under current law, governed by Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act on private disposals. Anyone who holds Bitcoin or another crypto asset for more than twelve months and then sells pays no income tax on the gain. Anyone who sells earlier pays tax on the gain at their personal income tax rate, once the threshold for private disposals is exceeded.

It is precisely this mechanism that is up for disposal. If the period falls, the moment of sale no longer counts for tax purposes: a gain would then be taxable regardless of whether the position was held for two weeks or six years. For holders with a long-term horizon that is the real cut, not the level of the tax rate.

Registration by October 9 at 12 noon: how to get into the committee room

Interested members of the public and media representatives can register with the secretariat of the petitions committee by October 9, 2026, 12:00, giving their name and date of birth. Registration runs via the address vorzimmer.peta@bundestag.de.

Two points of the announcement are easily skimmed over. First: if capacity is exceeded, places are allocated solely on the basis of when the registration arrived. Anyone who wants to be there has to be early, not merely on time. Second: a valid identity card is required for admission, and the police at the German Bundestag carry out a reliability check on registered guests. The data submitted for this – surname, first name and date of birth – is deleted or destroyed after the visit.

Media representatives additionally require accreditation to enter the Bundestag buildings. Unauthorised photography and recording, for instance with a mobile phone, is not permitted; mobile phones are to be switched off in the committee room.

Livestream and parliamentary television: where to watch the sitting

Anyone who lets the registration deadline pass, or does not want to travel to Berlin, misses nothing of substance. The sitting will be broadcast live online at bundestag.de and on the German Bundestag's parliamentary television channel. The recording will then be made permanently available on the Bundestag's pages.

In practice that means: the livestream is enough for everyone who only wants to know what the federal government's representatives answer to specific questions. The permanent recording is the underrated part. Anyone unable to follow the sitting on Monday lunchtime will find the statements verifiable later in the same place, in their exact wording rather than in a summary.

What the finance ministry's draft bill says

A draft bill is a piece of draft legislation from the working level of a ministry. It first goes to associations and interest groups for comment, then the cabinet takes it up, and only a resolution by the Bundestag and the Bundesrat turns it into applicable law. At this stage, therefore, nothing is binding.

In substance, the finance ministry's draft provides for crypto assets held privately to be assigned in future to income from capital assets under Section 20 of the German Income Tax Act. With that shift the one-year holding period falls away, because Section 23 with its speculation period no longer applies. Gains would instead be charged the flat-rate withholding tax of 25 percent, plus the solidarity surcharge and, where applicable, church tax. The consultation of associations rested on a tight timetable: comments were only possible until October 6. The draft's path to the cabinet is set out in our analysis of the cabinet date.

For placing October 12 in context, it matters that the petition and the draft bill are two separate routes. The committee deliberates a request to the Bundestag. The ministry runs a legislative procedure in parallel. The two only meet in parliament, and parliament is not yet up at the time of the sitting.

Grandfathering and the December 31, 2026 cutoff date

The point on which most hangs for existing portfolios is grandfathering. Under the draft bill, the new taxation is to apply to crypto assets acquired or received after December 31, 2026. For holdings acquired earlier, the provision is that the previous legal position continues to apply, so the one-year holding period is retained for them.

From that follows an inconspicuous but consequential shift: the decisive date is no longer the sale but the acquisition. Anyone who, in case of doubt, cannot show when a holding was acquired will struggle to invoke grandfathering. For purchases via an exchange the date is on the statement; with transfers between wallets, with swaps and with inflows from staking or airdrops, the documentation quickly becomes unwieldy. A portfolio tracker with a tax function brings these moments together while the data can still be retrieved from the exchanges. Why the draft puts the cutoff at the turn of the year in the first place is something we took apart in our analysis of grandfathering.

The sequence remains important: this grandfathering has not been adopted. It stands in a draft that still has to pass the cabinet and parliament, and cutoff dates have been moved before in the legislative process.

Petition procedure: what effect a committee vote has

The right of petition is set out in Article 17 of the Basic Law: everyone may address requests and complaints to the competent authorities and to the legislature. The petitions committee examines such submissions and closes a procedure with a recommendation for a decision by the Bundestag, on which the plenary then rules.

Realistically, that means for October 12: no change to the draft bill follows from the sitting, and a committee vote does not bind the federal government. Anyone counting on the petition to save the holding period overestimates the instrument. What the public deliberation does deliver can be named: the public sitting forces government representatives to answer questions from members of parliament on camera, and it makes those answers permanently verifiable. For judging how firm the ministry's timetable is, that is worth more than any speculation about majorities.

Why the hearing falls two days before the cabinet meets on October 14

The order of the dates produces a dense picture. The starting point was the cabinet decision of July 6, 2026 on the 2027 budget bill, which contained the tax reordering of crypto assets. The petition followed, with signing closing on September 15. In parallel the draft bill went to the associations, whose comment period ran out on October 6. On October 12 the petitions committee deliberates in public; on October 14 the cabinet is to adopt the draft.

Those two days of distance are why the date is more than a parliamentary routine item for investors. After October 14 a cabinet decision exists, and from then on the discussion shifts from the question of whether the holding period falls to the question of what the transitional rules look like. Before October 14, the 12th is the only public occasion on which the government answers for this project.

What investors in Germany can check before December 31

The honest starting position is this: there is no adopted law, and nobody can seriously say in which version the rule will finally appear in the federal law gazette. Something can nonetheless be prepared, and it is precisely what will be needed in every conceivable version.

The first point is the evidence. Under the draft, the moment of acquisition decides whether a holding falls under grandfathering. Anyone whose purchases are spread over several years and several platforms should export the statements and transaction histories now, while the accounts still exist and the data can be retrieved. Exchanges shut down old accounts, switch report formats or drop trading pairs; a history that takes two clicks to pull today can cost a support request in a year's time. Which platforms supply complete tax reports and which only a raw data list is shown in our comparison of crypto exchanges.

The second point is self-custody. Anyone holding assets in a self-custodied wallet has no provider to issue confirmation of acquisition in case of doubt. Here your own documentation carries everything: the purchase receipt from the original exchange, the date and transaction ID of the transfer, the address of the destination wallet. That chain should be complete before it is needed.

The third point is restraint with reallocations driven only by tax. A swap from one crypto asset into another is, for tax purposes, a disposal and a fresh acquisition. Anyone reallocating shortly before a possible cutoff date can destroy precisely the moment of acquisition that matters later. For an individual situation the tax adviser is responsible, not an article; this text is no substitute for tax advice.

Crypto holding period: What to take away

October 12 brings no decision, but the last public exchange before the cabinet. Three steps follow from it:

1. Gather your acquisition dates. Collect all purchases, swaps and inflows with their dates in one place, because the moment of acquisition decides on the planned grandfathering. A tax tool or portfolio tracker takes over the consolidation across several platforms.
2. Pull the evidence from the exchanges. Export your transaction history and tax report and save them locally before accounts or report formats change. Which providers put out usable reports is set out in the exchange comparison.
3. Document self-custodied holdings. For coins in your own wallet there is no provider receipt, so the purchase receipt, transfer date and destination address belong on file together. Which device is suitable for that is shown in our hardware wallet comparison.

And on the Monday itself, the livestream at bundestag.de is enough once the registration deadline has passed on October 9.

(As of October 6, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)