Crypto-assets

Since its 2022 reform, Austria treats crypto-assets as a category of investment income, alongside dividends and securities gains. Two kinds of events are taxed: current income — rewards received for putting crypto to work, such as lending yield — and realised gains when crypto is disposed of against official currency, goods or services. Both are taxed at the flat 27.5% rate that governs most capital income, described in context on the investment income and capital gains page. A taxpayer may opt for the progressive rates instead where that is cheaper, but the option has to be exercised for all income otherwise taxed at the special rates that year, not for crypto alone — and at this asset level it rarely helps.

The table below sets out the main events. The pattern to remember: moving value between crypto-assets is ignored; moving value out of crypto is taxed.

One boundary is worth marking: the regime covers crypto-currencies and comparable tokens. NFTs generally fall outside it and are taxed under the general rules for private assets, where a one-year speculation period still governs — a point to review case by case. Two narrow exceptions to the flat rate belong here as well: interest on crypto loans that were not offered to the public in legal and practical terms, and crypto activity that forms a focus of a business, are taxed at the progressive rates instead.

Austria's answer to the valuation problems of staking, airdrops and similar rewards is elegant: rather than taxing an estimated value at receipt, it sets the acquisition cost of the coins received at zero and waits. Nothing is due while the rewards sit in the wallet. On disposal, the entire proceeds — not just the growth since receipt — are taxed at 27.5%. Deferral in exchange for a wider base.

In practice this places a premium on record-keeping. Units of the same coin held in the same wallet are pooled at a moving average acquisition cost — different coins are averaged separately — so zero-cost rewards mixed with purchased units dilute the average and raise the taxable gain on every future sale. Where a wallet holds both pre- and post-March-2021 units of the same coin, you may choose which of them count as sold first. Clean wallet hygiene — and complete transaction histories from every platform used, before accounts are closed in the course of a move — makes the eventual Austrian filings straightforward. Losses realised on crypto can be offset against other investment income taxed at 27.5% in the same year, such as dividends and securities gains, though not against bank interest; unused losses from private holdings do not carry forward.

Where an Austrian crypto service provider executes the transaction, it has withheld the 27.5% tax at source since 2024 — the same convenience Austrian banks provide for securities, which generally settles the tax without further filing. Holdings on foreign exchanges or in self-custody are your own responsibility: gains and current income must be declared in the annual return, on the timetable described on the income tax rates page. Where crypto sits within the wider Austrian system — residence, rates and the other flat-taxed asset classes — is mapped on the tax hub.

Assuming the tax office will not know is a poor strategy, and becoming a poorer one. From 1 January 2026 the EU's DAC8 directive and the OECD's Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework require crypto service providers to collect and report account and transaction data, with the first automatic exchanges between tax authorities due in 2027. Together with the exchange of conventional account data described on the banking and finance page, crypto holdings are moving into the same transparency framework as bank accounts. Arriving in Austria with complete records and a clean reporting position costs little; retrofitting one later costs a great deal more.