Bitcoin Forum

Hi :)

sorry for writing in english here, but it is hard to know in english section who is from spain and who not.

I'm from germany and would like to know how private bitcoin profits are taxed in spain .
Just the profits from normal trading on exchanges and holding coins not longer then one year.

In germany it is a "private sale" and the profits are added to your income, except you holded the coins one year or more.
How is it in spain ?
Do you know how the tax is in other countries? I would like to gather information how tax situation is in european countries.

Regards,
Serpens66

(thread was moved out of spanish section...)

In Spain the profits for selling bitcoins which you have kept for less than one year are added to your income and taxed as such. All those profits would go to the "base general".

You can find the rates that apply here:
https://www.rankia.com/blog/irpf-declaracion-renta/3527053-cuales-son-tramos-irpf (https://www.rankia.com/blog/irpf-declaracion-renta/3527053-cuales-son-tramos-irpf)

Tabla Tramos IRPF 2017
Base liquidable general   Tipo impositivo 2016
Desde   Hasta   
0€             12.450€            19%
12.450€    20.200€             24%
20.200€    35.200€             30%
35.200€    60.000€             37%
60.000€    -                        45%

EDIT: There may be some differences in the table of the "base general" depending on your "comunidad autónoma". The table above for the "base general" applies to most of Spain, including Madrid. However, Barcelona may be approximately 2% more expensive.


If you keep them for more than one year, the table that applies is called "base del ahorro". For more than one year:
http://www.expansion.com/economia/2017/01/12/58760535e5fdea8b628b4609.html (http://www.expansion.com/economia/2017/01/12/58760535e5fdea8b628b4609.html)

Desde       Hasta               Tipo impositivo 2017
0€             6.000€            19%
6.000€      50.000€           21%
50.000€    -                      23%


I am not an expert in finance but I think it works that way.

thank you very much :)

Hey Serpens66,

I moved from Germany to Spain and just got into the tax issue too. As far as I'm aware there's no 1 year differentiation here any more. Trading profits always count as savings income, so the base del ahorro (max 23%) applies, no matter how long you held.

Sources:
http://www.bolsamania.com/declaracion-impuestos-renta/como-tributan-los-bitcoins-en-la-renta/
https://noticias.infocif.es/noticia/tributacion-de-los-bitcoins

in some countries in carribean , you dont pay any tax.

They are getting greedy it seems. Someone noticed the increased value and rising popularity and pushed through a "better" option.
"Look, those investors are now going to have a lot of money, why lose an opportunity to get some more cash into our budget?"

Also I'm amazed that they have such high taxes for high income. 45% tax? WTF? It saddens me that Spain is ruled by socialists.

the majority of countries in europe did not recognized bitcoin properly, and they still seems to ignore it, here in italy we don't have any regulation about bitcoin, and also appear to be no taxes to pay on capital gain unless you go above a threshold

i suspect other country just apply the usual capital gain when you trade, and for mining you can go ahead and ignore anything as long you don't convert, if you convert just declare what yo get in a year to avoid trouble

Hi, do you have any idea what is this "above a threshold" percentage in Italy exactly?

Non-regulated environment sounds interesting to me in short term (i.e. year 2018)!

If this is true, being tax compliant in Spain becomes a hell for an active trader.

Strangely it contradicts somewhat with:


No real value before conversion to Euros, but liable to taxation in change of equity between cryptos.
I know some other European countries agreeing with the "no real money before converted" thinking, but sane enough not to say you need to announce profits trading between BTC/altcoin pairs. Can someone confirm this schizophrenic ruling? How in the world can they enforce it?

_{Quotes Chrome translated from this source:
http://www.bolsamania.com/declaracion-impuestos-renta/como-tributan-los-bitcoins-en-la-renta/}

I think Shawshank is right but not in the last point, as pharesim has said. It used to be like that but government changed it in 2015. So, it doesn’t matter how long you hold them.

Something that hasn’t been said is that as far as taxes are concerned, a miner is considered a businessman, so tax to pay is different: it is the IAE.
This article has a great general overview on crypto taxes in Spain (in Spanish):

http://www.bolsamania.com/noticias/declaracion-renta/los-impuestos-del-bitcoin-y-el-ether-asi-tributan-operadores-mineros-y-comercios-que-trabajan-con-criptodivisas--2724307.html

Adding to my earlier questions the link for the site provided by Don Pedro Dinero above:

(http://www.bolsamania.com/noticias/declaracion-renta/los-impuestos-del-bitcoin-y-el-ether-asi-tributan-operadores-mineros-y-comercios-que-trabajan-con-criptodivisas--2724307.html)


I'm still confused about value gained between alt transactions...

All my BTC purchases happened years ago with insignificant amounts and thus I'm not even interested in reporting deductions of sales.
If I became a tax resident in Spain, could I just simply report taxes simply by declaring capital gains tax on the BTC converted to Euros?

Can a Spanish resident trader simply sell BTC to EUR into bank account and just report that as capital gains and be done with it?

For me I couldn't justify residing in a jurisdiction which required me to report every single trade I've made between cryptocurrencies...

Anyone got a clue / where to get completely reliable information about this?

First, these are the Spanish lawyers who know the most about cryptos taxes. I may go to ask them in the future.

https://www.abanlex.com/areas-de-practica/derecho-de-internet/bitcoin-y-otras-criptomonedas/

As for what you are asking for Hacienda (the Spanish law department): investing in cryptos is like investing in forex, you only pay taxes on them when you convert them into Euros, because you may lose everything. There are some exceptions to this like the Impuesto del Patrimonio, but as far as what you are asking I think it will be enough to declare them when you convert them into euros.

That quote you put is the opinion of a lawyer, he says that you should pay taxes when you exchange cryptos for btc or the other way around, but Hacienda hasn’t means to check that nowadays.

This taxation is like when you buy and sell stocks or funds. You may have bought them at different times and prices, so if you sell part of your investment, the FIFO system applies.

If you are taking about a significant amount of money, it is worth spending a little bit asking abanlex lawyers.  For small amounts, if you pay taxes, Hacienda is not likely to mess with you.

This is the kind of clarification I was looking for!
I got a feeling the lawyer was talking about just his own opinion, but wasn't sure.

Having to do individual profit/loss calculation on each trade would be a monumental task to do and if it ever got to the point where a tax office would ask me the details, I'd perhaps print out several hundreds of pages of exchange transactions and let them figure it out themselves  ;D

To me it sounds most plausible that they won't bother if your income is not astronomical.

Thanks a lot for referring that firm, I've been looking for ones if I ever need some consultation in the future!  :)

I thought the EU was supposed to be all united and stuff. It's bizarre how different tax treatments are especially when people can just move.

If I had enough BTC I'd definitely relocate for as long as it took to pay the tax if I needed to cash out. If I'd held for less than a year I'd head to the Netherlands. The capital gains there is less than 2%.

EU is not supposed to be all united, well, apart from pro EU Federal State neoliberal corporatist's / bureaucrats kind of people's dreams.

European nations have their own long term traditions of law, economic policies, culture and so on and to compare the states of the US are, even if thought of as local law sandboxes, still very much bound by the Federal jurisdiction.

EU citizens in most EU countries are generally quite in much of opposition to generalizing everything for everyone as it tends to benefit only few economies while others suffer as the last recession clearly showed. Re-nationalization is a strong movement in last few years to counter idealism which has not translated into practice - Namely as cultures and economies within the regions are vastly different and have minds of their own.


Majority of the people can't "just move" apart from their holidays.
Most people are still tied to local employment and thus very immobile.
Other limiting factors are language and cultural barriers that prevent ordinary people to make a leap.

Even if you could remove 10-20 % of taxation in some cases, you'd had to uproot your entire life, learn new language, etc.
Conformism, nationalism, comfort zones... Many reasons pile up to make it a very different zone that say, the US is, where you could hop State very easily as an average citizen.


Netherlands would make sense for some as you are right for capital gains being very low, but for instance, I'd rather pay 20% to Spain than 2% to Netherlands for the sole reason of weather, language, culture, choice of different cities, local climates, people's outlook on life etc.

The problem with most tax residency laws is that you actually have to spend more than 6 months in a year to keep on enjoying (or not) those levels of taxation... Chancing tax residencies is not a quick process of packing your bags and going to another country as the laws are bit more persistent than just booking a flight and going - Freedom of travel is an amazing thing, but tax laws are very different thing.
I hope this made sense to you and you'll have a better idea why things are the way they are :)

As any worker and any business can relocate anywhere in the EU I'm surprised the tax treatments are still so different. We can see all the friction it's caused with Amazon domiciling in Luxembourg and denying tax to the other multiple EU countries it operates in.

I don't really see how that's sustainable as the corporate giants get bigger and more ravenous.

I myself would have no compunction about moving to another country for a while to save a few million in tax. I've lived in a few different countries and it was no big deal. Walk down the average street in any large EU city and it'll quickly become clear that millions of people are doing just the same thing.

Just a short addition to netherlands:
As far as I know you often do not pay captial gains on bitcoin profits. In most countries, netherlands included, you pay income tax on profits. So it is expensive in netherlands.
Source:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1935246.msg19220592#msg19220592

Only if you're an active trader rather than a long term holder. I've no idea how you prove that or what the criteria are, but I'd guess most people are just sitting on coins rather than trading them like mad. It would be interesting to hear from people in this situation how it was decided what was a living and what was a hobby.

Yes as long as you don't convert your crypto to fiat taxes will not be placed on it. Just keep the coin and when it reaches $20,000 a piece convert it to fiat. You won't notice the tax on it anymore since your returns is 8x of original price. But on other thought how are they going to determine how much you gained from the coin?

I've seen a few people who've cashed out and coughed up say they priced everything they paid at 1c each for the sake of an easy life.

As long as you keep records of all your bank transfers and wallet movements it must be possible to build a precise picture of all your gains. Should the time ever come I don't think I'll bother with that as it'll be a pretty negligible difference in the tax paid with a whole lot of extra work on top.

Hello

The way how bitcoin will be taxed most probably will be the same on how governments are taxing incomes from stocks that you have on stocks exchange. It will only be applied once you have it converted to fiat. so it doesn't matter on how long you keep the coin tax will still be applied to your income after the conversion.

First, it is advisable to understand what you read before commenting on it.

According to those posts the tax rate seems to be reduced, classifying any conversion of coins as investment.

But second:


Im amazed that the people of other countries, namely the US and the like, can pay through nose for the services the people in Spain receive almost for free, but still not get even half the service people in Spain are getting, while living in perpetual risk of medical bankruptcy or peril of sending a kid to college amidst student loans reaching $100,000 ceiling, and yet then still criticize, and 'lament' the 'state of socialist countries'.

No amount of taxes you save in a non socialist country will save you when your private insurance bails out of paying for your necessities. Then, welcome, medical bankruptcy. Or, death.

https://www.themaven.net/theintellectualist/news/american-dies-after-coming-up-50-short-for-insulin-SS40PFVy_0eop_3N2Q_8Vw

Something like that would end in a riot or a revolution in Spain.

Beyond that, to get the healthcare levels one can get in Spain you would pay around ~$10,000/year and then still be required to 'pay at the point of service' in the US. And then it wouldnt cover a lot of other things, and then it wouldnt be valid in all hospitals in all states, and then it would also always have the risk of insurance bailing out on you.

It saddens me that people can die out of being denied healthcare because they dont have enough money in US.

If only US was socialist enough...

And this is without touching things like free education, infrastructure, other social services and stuff.

Thank you for this advice, I'll take it to heart.
I was answering a post, not the links, as I'm not a spanish speaker. If those 23% is actually a reduced rate it's even worse and I support my previous statement about them being greedy. I can't believe people used to pay more than 23% of their income to their government. To me it's slavery, but you can call it however you like.



So you're supporting socialism, did I read it right? I'm not putting the US on a pedestal here as it's still taking a huge part of your salary and not giving a lot in return. I'm rather looking the other way round as there are countries not far from Spain that still have free education and healthcare and aren't forcing you to give away 1/4 of your income, which turns to be over 1/3 if you add VAT. Do you really like the idea of depending on the government to provide these services? I'd rather have the money and the ability to pay at the time of need instead of letting others decide whether I do or do not.

What you call socialism would be termed social democracy here, and actually, in Spain there are a lot of actual socialists (not social democrats) and a decent amount of the voter base is communist. Actual communists.


Actually, there isnt any such country. Spain is one of the countries which have considerably lower taxes in europe.

And, in other countries outside europe which have low income tax rates but still provide full coverage of free services, these are generally funded via corporate taxes.


Actually i am a big enthusiast of it.

Leaving aside the fact that the 'bad government, good 'market'' thing is a religious belief which pertains pretty much only to US political discourse:


Every single private corporation in a private market will have profit maximization at any cost as their target.

Which, creates circumstances like in US, where someone can die $50 short of a diabetes drug, or a medium grade operation can cost over $50,000 whereas one night in hospital can cost in between $3000-$7000 (the latest is old statistic, its probably higher now).

Without even entering the topic of selling lead painted toys, or instigating wars on lies to profit from weapon sales and the stuff like that.

.........

A government is beholden to its voters. Screw them, and an informed electorate will screw you well, and even they will elect a government to properly prosecute your hide for what you did to them.

A private corporation is not beholden to anybody - it can choose to sell drugs to 300 million people, knowing that it will kill hundreds of thousands of people from side effects, which they will move to prevent anyone from leaking through bribery and harassment, kill over 150,000 people due to heart attacks resulting from their drug, get discovered, prosecuted by government, get fined $4 billion for killing 150,000 people, and still make $11 billion net profit in the process.

That's what Glaxo Smith Klein did in US. You dont even know about this, because you didnt hear it since it wasnt made major news in premium corporate media. Its bad for joint investments of their majority shareholders after all...

So yeah, instead of a private corporation which would seek out profiting at any cost, i would much rather trust my government to handle my affairs, because at least i have the power to place them, depose them, and prosecute them if necessary. A politician is responsible with what s/he does. In contrast, a private citizen running a private company has much, much reduced responsibility.

It is understandable that there is a great distrust in government in US, because government and private sector have revolving doors in between them and lobbyist money basically makes the laws. And electorate doesnt mean zit, because it takes money to run an election campaign, and its not the people who have the money. It is natural that you vote, vote, and vote, but things never change.

However this also has been your mistake - you bought the 'evil government' discourse, and let the people who wanted to create exactly this environment in which you would be powerless against big, massive money, take the helm.

Personally I hate communism and I won't understand why anyone would be in favour of the system that has worked like a cancer everywhere it appeared. Thanks to it the Eastern Europe is still in a disadvantage compared to its Western part and countries where Communism has ruled for too long have gone through civil wars, martial law, dictators and poverty. Communism cannot exist in a modern world because it's model of power is delusional, mythical. It will always end up the way the Animal Farm did.

I won't argue about the level and number of services offered in Spain because I haven't been there, but to compare:
Bulgaria 10% on both corporate and individual
Belarus: corporate 18% individual 13%-17%, no taxes on cryptocurrencies
Even in Russia you have 13% individual and 20% corporate and I believe all these countries offer free education.
Of course you're correct that taxes in spain are low if we compare to countries like Germany or Belgium but there are also countries that offer more freedom in this matter, even in Europe.


That said IMO every country that has a higher income bracket for a certain level is as socialist as it gets. Awarding people lower taxes for being less productive and punishing others with higher ones for doing something right is exploitation at its finest. I like it when I have everything clear on paper as to how much a certain procedure costs. The problem with prepaid, government run healthcare is that it creates lines, huge lines. If you are in need you end up waiting months or even years for it because there are hundreds of people waiting for the same thing and the hospital has a limited number of (...). Many people have to go to a private clinic and pay anyway, even though they've been paying healthcare tax for the last 20 years. I know people that have been in such situation and think they've been ripped off by the system.
To give you an example, I had my health insurance years ago and I had to go to the dentist. I got told that x-rays aren't refunded and so are painkillers and so is the root canal treatment that I had to do. Guess what my insurance would cover. The extraction...


I agree with the rest, the system in the US isn't good and the corporations aren't good but the system in the EU isn't either. They're blindly taking in migrants that they later have to fight on the streets and they're making the citizens pay for it all.

That would be due to not knowing what communism is, and confusing marxist-leninist state capitalism with communism. Its a common mistake to make especially in US or other anglo-american countries, because these countries have gone through immense propaganda to vilify communism, not leninism, state capitalism or even mistermed socialism, because communism was a threat to the established 0.1%'s control on economy and politics.

And even if one uses the incorrect terms for communism:


Actually, those countries are in EU since last 15~ years, and they are even worse than when they started:

A ~10% of population lives much, much better and in much luxury, but a majority has to do with considerably less than what they had during leninism.

During those 'poverty' times, they had full employment guarantee, free housing, free education, free healthcare, reasonable work hours, reasonable retirement age, paid vacations, immense number of free social clubs which would cost in the order of ~10,000-15,000/year in US to obtain memberships (not that one could use all of them but eh), never had to fear homelessness, bankruptcy or anything of that order, leave aside the neoliberal stressful work environment they face today.

The ironical result is that now a good deal of them are immigrants in Western Europe, and they are being the target of anti-immigration sentiments and vilification. So much that they had become a major item in Brexit politics.

As for 'animal farm', as chomsky says any dictator would admire the cooperation and obedience of western media - and the mythical freedom so much advocated in the west actually does not exist:

Leaving aside you are only as free as the size of your wallet and any freedom is limited financially so that only those who are compliant with the system can have any say, if per chance people so much as shake themselves up and start organizing, the real face of the system immediately shows itself.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy

Proving once that Voltaire's timeless words about finding out who is ruling you by looking at whom you are not allowed to criticize, Occupy protesters were bagged, harassed, beaten on the ground and arrested to be fined tens of thousands of dollars for trespassing on public property, effectively bankrupting many of them since these are ordinary people who would not be able to shell out such cash, and discouraging millions who could not risk encountering the same fines. In short, freedom was again tied to the size of one's wallet, and they didnt have the wallet size for that freedom.

All of this happened after press was pushed away from the relevant areas and prevented from taking footage. So much for media freedom.

In the end, all these people needed to do to see the real breadth and width of their liberty was to criticize who really rules them: Wall Street.

After 2011, numerous 3 letter agencies and many private corporations started using the word 'terrorism' in regard to activists, anti-corporate crowd, and anyone who challenges who's really in power.



Bulgaria, Romania are still in the process of letting multinational corporations plunder their natural resources, and they are also recipients of Eu aid to industrialize and raise life standards.

But before that, the quality of healthcare, education, services in Spain and these two countries cannot even be compared. If otherwise, there wouldnt be so many romanians in Spain.


Man...

Belarus is de facto Soviet Union, still. Run in the manner of soviet union, structured in the manner of soviet union, it even still retains KGB as name of its intelligence service.

Public ownership of major natural resources is another way of funding a state and social services, by the way. Numerous countries do it, and that also includes Norway.

Its still public ownership of resources. Except, instead of a nation selling out their natural resources to private corporations for plunder, it retains them and uses the profits. Then taxes can be naturally reduced, for they are being met from another resource.


To quote Vladimir Vladimirovich:

"Russia is a company owned by a country".

The reason Vladimir Putin is so popular is that he runs Russia as USSR 2.0. All major natural resources, especially oil, are owned through state owned corporations, and these fund the state and its programs.

On top of that Vladimir Putin not only revived numerous Soviet Era labour awards with the name "Russian" at the start instead of "Soviet", but also has brought back various important features like youth organizations back.

Immense oil profits and defense profits via state owned companies allow Russia to retain many services free or very cheap. So even if they cannot match the surefire guarantee levels and amplitude of services and service quality like in USSR days, they can still sport a pretty socialized state.

To top that their capitalism is weird: Corporations do what state tells them to do.

When US forced Eu to sanction Russia, with big expense to Eu businesses, Putin government said 'we will do import substitution and turn our face Eastward".

Entire country retooled and started to integrate with China and new silk road, not even one corporation or company tried to refuse or lobby against the change, leave aside spending money to force government to do what they want instead of what the electorate wants. In US, such a situation would be unimaginable.

Its easy to understand what "Russia is a company owned by a country" means by looking at that example...


No, letting people employ 3 million people and giving them dimes to make a fortune bigger than 150 countries in the world is exploitation.

Thats what Walton family is. Something bigger than 150 countries in the world. They could easily become their own empire over the backs of the people they make work, and the small businesses they bankrupted.

Any organization that grows to thousands of people cannot be considered like a small shop run by one person. Its no longer one person's actual honest effort, but one or few majority shareholders making people work, and taking most of the value generated.

The people who get highest share from their actual work are top technical personnel in Silicon Valley companies, and even they get to a maximum of 10% they create.

Everyone else on the planet get much less than 10% of what actual economic value they create, all the rest goes to majority shareholders of that corporation.


Please dont talk from hearsay and propaganda.

Such a reality does not exist. Nowhere in Europe, Japan, or even in Russia or the examples you gave.

It just doesnt freaking exist. It only exists in the speak that come out of private think-thanks which receive healthcare money in US, and fox news, but the latter is among the former anyway.


In almost all countries with socialized healthcare, dental is not covered. That's not an example. And in many of such countries, if the dental situation was causing a health situation, the system would take care of it.

But...

I very much suspect you are in UK or another country which suffered through a series of neoliberal governments in the past decade and went through privatization push for those services.

NHS has been underfunded, and crippled in order to justify privatizing it for a long time. Similar stunts were pulled in numerous other countries who got through neoliberal governments.

Farage in UK was talking about how UK needed an 'american style system' before Brexit. Now he seems to have shut up after the 300 mil pounds a month for nhs lie got out.

Neoliberal right wing government which has been in power since last 10 years in Spain wanted to do the same to spanish health system.

Spaniards went out to streets. Blood was spilled. Neoliberal government had to pipe down. That was not even enough, for after that Spaniards gave ~20% of the assembly to communists, another 20% to socialists. Madrid state assembly was taken over by socialists, and a socialist (not social democrat) woman was put as president.

That's how you protect your public services from rape and privatization. If you dont, it takes around a decade before they cripple and sell it all...


My chap...

The system in US is not 'not good', its murderous. Glaxo Smith Klein was not the only company which got prosecuted for killing hundreds of thousands of people at that point in time, there were 3 others, and together, these 4 corporations constitute the majority of pharmaceutical sector.

Moreover the system itself kills people every day.

https://www.quora.com/Were-there-any-American-citizens-living-on-US-soil-who-died-because-they-couldnt-afford-healthcare/answer/Dem-Stag
https://www.quora.com/Were-there-any-American-citizens-living-on-US-soil-who-died-because-they-couldnt-afford-healthcare/answer/Robert-Rister
https://www.quora.com/In-the-U-S-if-an-uninsured-homeless-man-shows-up-in-the-emergency-room-in-urgent-need-of-a-100-000-operation-will-the-hospital-perform-it-or-let-him-die/answer/Robert-Rister
https://www.quora.com/Have-any-American-citizens-ever-been-personally-denied-healthcare-in-the-USA/answer/Tessa-E-Tea
https://www.quora.com/Have-any-American-citizens-ever-been-personally-denied-healthcare-in-the-USA/answer/Jack-Menendez

These are personal stories. Below are statistics.

http://inthesetimes.com/article/18638/barbara-ehrenreich-americas-blue-collar-white-people-are-dying-at-astoundin

Corporations are past the point of sociopathy. For, it is encouraged, rewarded and even enforced.

https://hbr.org/2012/03/psychopaths-on-wall-street



Compared to US, system in Eu would be Star Trek compared to 1000 AD.

Migrants are an ironic point - because it is neoliberal right wing governments which are taking in immigrants as a means to reduce labor costs to make way for more corporate profits...

Amazingly, the forum censored a wall street journal article link as 'suspicious link'. i had to replace the article from harvard business review...

It was a pleasant discussion. Needless to say, its a bit out of the boundaries of bitcointalk to enter a long philosophical, analytic discussion of systems and histories.

I would recommend Quora for such topics, like socialism, communism, capitalism, the impact of impending AI revolution and its impact on economy and inevitable consequences and so on.

Good evening.

Of course, if every transaction is taxed, then the state will get additional foreign exchange for the state treasury. And it would be very profitable for a country that imposes a tax on bitcoins. Because I'm sure, many people today use bitcoin transactions.

According to latest news Portugal doesn't tax profits on cryptocurrencies. This has to be confirmed though. It's always advisable to speak to a local tax attorney in the country that you are thinking of relocating instead of asking in forum. They tend to be more clued up with regard to the ins and outs of the law then most common forum members (including myself). just my 2 satoshis ;)