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August 07, 2026, 09:43:46 PM |
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Situation:
My wife is from Brazil but lives with me in Belgium. I got into crypto 5 years ago when our government had no taxes on crypto assets. But the government is running a large deficit and they keep rising taxes on crypto profits annually.
If you have invested more than 25% of your life savings into BTC, they refuse to consider you an investor (10k tax free per year, and 10% tax on profits) and they will turn it into speculation even if you held the assets for years. Meaning they will now demand 33% on all capital gains and there is no tax free amount. And if the gains exceed your annual earnings from your job, they can increase the tax to over 50%. Therefore cashing out in Belgium is an absolute no go for me.
So given that my wife is from Brazil, I tried to be creative with tax strategies. Brazil has friendlier rates in terms of capital gains tax, but I had a different idea.
Option 1: While me and my wife are both tax residents in Belgium, I donate my entire crypto portfolio to my mother in law who lives in Brazil. She is a tax resident in Brazil. She is very old and I trust her for 100%. She comes to visit Belgium 6 months per year and we can help her manage that portfolio on Binance when she is with us.
AI tells me that if she sells my portfolio, the capital gains tax in Brazil is counted from the day that I made the donation. Not from the day I purchased BTC here in Europe. So if I bought BTC for 30k (2023) and she takes profit at 200k in 2029, she pays something like 20% capital gains tax based on profit after the day of the donation. Making the day of the donation critical to avoid high tax.
If I donate when BTC is 200k and she sells at 199k, there is no capital gain and therefore she owes 0 tax.
Am I missing something here? One negative consequence of this strategy: My wife has a sister (who we both do not like) and if my mother in law dies while she still owns the BTC, the sister gets 50% of all assets by law. A written testament (will) can not change that.
Option 2 is that we bypass my mother in law completely. My wife can move back to Brazil (means she has to quit her job and her life here), become a tax resident in Brazil, and I donate to her as soon as she changed her tax residency.
Any opinions? People always tell me to consult tax agents, but even in my own country they don't know what the IRS will charge. Let alone they would know it in a international situation.
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