Crypto Tax by Country: Rates and Rules in 22 Countries Compared

General information, not tax advice. Rules change and personal circumstances differ — treat this table as a map, then read the country guide and check the primary source before you file.

There is no international standard for taxing crypto. The same disposal that is completely tax-free in Germany after twelve months can cost you 55% in Japan, and countries do not even agree on what a taxable event is — swap BTC for ETH and you have triggered tax in Ireland but not in France or Poland. This page puts 22 regimes side by side so the differences are visible at a glance, with a full guide behind each one.

The comparison table

Four patterns worth seeing

Read down the table and the 22 regimes collapse into a handful of designs. Knowing which one you are in tells you more than the rate does.

• •Holding-period regimes reward patience, sometimes enormously. Germany and Portugal drop to zero after twelve months and 365 days; Australia halves the taxable gain; the US cuts the rate from income rates to 0/15/20%. In these countries the single biggest legal lever is the calendar, not the calculator.
• •Flat-rate regimes ignore how long you held and how much you earn. Poland at 19%, Ireland at 33%, Brazil at 17.5% and India at 30% treat a one-day flip and a five-year hold identically — which makes planning simple and rewards nothing.
• •No-capital-gains regimes are not the same as no tax. Singapore, the UAE, Switzerland and Hong Kong genuinely charge investors nothing on disposals, but each has a line past which you become a trader or a business and start paying. New Zealand shows the opposite face of the same coin: with no CGT box to fall into, profit is caught as ordinary income at up to 39%.
• •Wealth-based regimes tax what you hold, not what you make. The Netherlands taxes a deemed return on your 1 January balance, and Switzerland levies an annual wealth tax. You can pay in a year you sold nothing — and a crash after the valuation date does not reduce the bill.

The swap question decides your record-keeping

The last column matters more than most people expect. Where a crypto-to-crypto swap is a taxable disposal — which is the majority position, from the US and UK to Ireland, Spain and Japan — every rotation between tokens needs a valuation in your local currency on the day, and an active year produces hundreds of taxable events.

France, Poland and Portugal are the notable exceptions: tax is deferred until you leave crypto for fiat, goods or services. That is a genuine simplification, not just a saving. Portugal goes further still — a swap does not reset the 365-day clock, so you can rebalance without losing your path to the exemption. The Netherlands sidesteps the question entirely by taxing a snapshot of value rather than transactions.

What the table cannot tell you

• •Staking, mining and airdrops are usually taxed as income when received, at their value on the day, and then again as a gain when sold — even in countries whose capital gains rate is zero. Switzerland is the clearest example: gains are tax-free, staking income is not.
• •Residency is what determines which row applies to you, and it is rarely a matter of choice or preference. Moving for a tax rate involves exit taxes, minimum-stay requirements and, in some countries, a look-back period.
• •Losses behave very differently. Most regimes let losses offset gains and carry forward; India lets neither. Poland ring-fences crypto losses inside crypto. New Zealand, unusually, lets a genuine loss offset your ordinary income.
• •Reporting duties are separate from tax. Spain's Modelo 721, France's form 3916-bis and South Africa's disclosure rules apply even in years you owe nothing, with their own penalties.

CARF: the reason 2026 is different

The OECD's Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework changes the enforcement picture everywhere in this table. It obliges crypto service providers to report user transaction data to tax authorities, which then exchange it across borders automatically.

The timing varies by country — the EU began on 1 January 2026, New Zealand's providers started collecting on 1 April 2026, and Hong Kong's rules commence on 1 January 2027 with the first exchange in 2028 — but the direction is uniform. Inland Revenue in New Zealand put the position bluntly in April 2026, saying it had already identified 355,000 crypto users domestically and that 'people are not invisible on blockchain.' The practical assumption for any 2026 activity onwards should be that your tax authority can see it.

Losses are the other half of the bill

Every rate in the table above applies to a net figure, and losses are what make it net. The rules for realising them differ as much as the rates do — the US wash-sale rule does not reach crypto at all, Canada's superficial-loss window runs 30 days on both sides of the sale, Spain's runs two months, and Germany and Portugal make losses on long-held positions non-deductible because the gain would have been exempt. The deadline is your tax year end, which is the one date on this page that cannot be extended.

The dates matter as much as the rates

Two different deadlines apply to every row in this table, and only one of them gets attention. The filing deadline is when the paperwork is due. The tax year end is when your options close — and that is the expensive one. An unused UK annual exempt amount disappears on 5 April rather than carrying forward, and a loss realised on 1 January instead of 31 December moves its relief a full year away. Ireland goes further and wants the tax on January-to-November disposals paid by 15 December, nearly a year before the return itself is due.

The bottom line

The headline rate is the least useful number on this page. What actually determines your bill is the structure: whether holding longer changes anything, whether swaps are taxed as you go, whether the charge is on gains or on holdings, and where the line sits between investing and trading. Find your row, then read the full guide — the details in it are where the money is.