Cryptocurrency tax in Spain: 2026 return and form 721

In Spain, cryptocurrencies are taxed under the IRPF, the personal income tax, when you sell them, swap them for another coin or pay with them: the difference between what you get and what they cost you is a capital gain or loss in the base del ahorro, the savings base, taxed at 19% on the first €6,000 and in bands up to 30% on anything above €300,000. What they cost you is worked out with FIFO, oldest first, across all your coins of the same type and without splitting by platform. Buying and holding is not taxed, and neither is moving coins to a wallet of your own. Staking rewards are investment income and airdrops are a gain in the general base. What you sell in 2026 goes on the return filed in spring 2027; and if on 31 December 2026 you hold more than €50,000 on foreign platforms, you also file form 721 between 1 January and 31 March 2027.

Every statement in this guide carries the rule or the binding ruling of the Dirección General de Tributos (DGT, the Spanish tax policy directorate) it comes from, and all of them are linked in the sources section at the end. Where something is not settled, we say so.

When your cryptocurrencies are taxed (and when they are not)

Under the IRPF there is a gain or loss when the composition of your assets changes (article 33.1 of the IRPF Act). In plain terms: when you move them with an economic effect, not when they go up or down.

• Selling for euros is taxed (or for any fiat currency), whether at a gain or a loss.
• Swapping one crypto for another is taxed. It is the most expensive and most common mistake: going from Bitcoin to Ethereum is a permuta, an exchange, and the Agencia Tributaria treats it as if you had sold the Bitcoin. Even though you have not seen a single euro, the gain exists and has to be declared. It is valued at the higher of the two market values, that of what you hand over and that of what you receive (article 37.1.h), and the DGT has repeated it in rulings V0648-24 and V5017-26. That includes a case almost nobody sees: in liquid staking, handing over ETH and receiving a token such as rETH is already an exchange, and undoing it is another (ruling V0612-26, March 2026).
• Paying with cryptocurrencies is taxed when you buy goods or services: that is a transfer too.
• Buying with euros and holding is not taxed. You can accumulate for years without declaring any gain: there is no transfer.
• Moving crypto between your own wallets is not taxed, from the exchange to your cold wallet or between two wallets of yours: it changes who holds them, not whose they are. Keep the receipts: you will have to be able to show the Agencia Tributaria that both ends were yours.

How the gain is worked out: the FIFO rule

The gain or loss is the difference between the transfer value (what you get when you sell, minus fees) and the acquisition value (what you paid, plus fees), under article 35 of the IRPF Act. The DGT accepts both platform fees and network fees (gas) among them when they are directly tied to the transaction (V0648-24).

When you have bought the same coin several times at different prices, the FIFO criterion applies (first in, first out): the oldest units are deemed sold first. It is worth knowing where it comes from, because nearly everyone gets this wrong. The law has no written rule for cryptocurrencies: article 37.2 sets it for shares and funds, «aquéllos que adquirió en primer lugar», the ones acquired first. The DGT, in binding ruling V1550-25 of 3 September 2025, acknowledges that gap and applies the same reasoning to cryptocurrencies because their units are identical to one another. That ruling binds the Agencia Tributaria, so it is the criterion you will be checked against.

And the queue has a second property that throws almost everyone: it is global per coin, with no split by platform. V1550-25 says it in so many words: the units transferred are the ones acquired first «sin distinguir por la plataforma a través de la que se efectúan las operaciones», whatever the platform used. If you bought bitcoin on one site in 2021 and sell bitcoin on another today, those first ones are what goes out.

Example: you bought 0.1 BTC for €3,000 in 2023 and another 0.1 BTC for €6,000 in 2025. If you sell 0.1 BTC today for €8,000, the gain is not measured against the purchase you prefer: «the first ones» go out, the €3,000 ones, and the gain to declare is €5,000.

With two purchases the sum can be done by hand; with two hundred, it cannot. Our tax calculator applies FIFO to your transaction history and gives you back the gain on each sale and the tax that comes out of the savings bands.

How much does the result change if you do not use FIFO?

Far more than it seems, and not always in your favour. This is the test we check the calculation engine behind our calculator against: three transactions, fees included, worked out both ways.

Date	Transaction	Amount with fees
January 2021	Buy 1 BTC at €30,000, €100 fee	Cost: €30,100
June 2021	Buy 1 BTC at €50,000, €100 fee	Cost: €50,100
March 2022	Sell 1.5 BTC at €40,000, €200 fee	Transfer value: €59,800

Method	Cost of what was sold	Result
FIFO (the one the Agencia Tributaria applies)	€30,100 for the first bitcoin + €25,050 for half of the second = €55,150	Gain of €4,650
Average cost	€40,100 per bitcoin × 1.5 = €60,150	Loss of €350

The same data give a gain or a loss depending on the method. With FIFO, that €4,650 falls entirely in the first savings band and comes to €883.50 of tax; with average cost there would be no tax at all and you would be declaring a loss on top. Anyone using a foreign app set to average cost files a return that does not match the DGT's criterion, and pays the difference with a surcharge when the Agencia Tributaria spots it.

The effect does not end with that sale. You are left with half a bitcoin that cost you €25,050 under FIFO and €20,050 under average cost: the next sale will come out differently too. That is why a history calculated with the wrong method is not fixed by changing one figure; it has to be redone from the first purchase.

How much is paid on gains in 2026?

Gains from selling or swapping go into the base del ahorro (article 46). The scale is the sum of two equal halves, the state one and the regional one (articles 66 and 76), and it is the one in force for 2026 according to the consolidated text in the BOE, the official gazette:

Slice of the savings base	Rate	Cumulative tax at the top of the band
Up to €6,000	19%	€1,140
€6,000 to €50,000	21%	€10,380
€50,000 to €200,000	23%	€44,880
€200,000 to €300,000	27%	€71,880
Over €300,000	30%	—

The bands are progressive: on a gain of €10,000 you would pay 19% on the first 6,000 and 21% on the remaining 4,000 — €1,980, not 21% of the lot. On €60,000 it would be €10,380 from the first two bands plus 23% of the 10,000 left over: €12,680. The Basque Country and Navarre have their own scale, and these figures do not apply there.

Losses count too (in your favour)

A bad year has its tax consolation, under the rules of article 49. Losses are offset against gains in the same tax year. If the balance is still negative, it can be set against investment income up to 25% of that income —and your staking rewards count there, because they are income of that kind—, and whatever is left over is carried forward for the next four years. Declaring losses is not optional if you want to use them: if they do not appear on the return, they do not exist.

Two details that cost money. First: an unsupported loss does not count (article 33.5.a), so without your purchase history there is no loss to claim. Second: article 33.5.e does not let you claim the loss on an asset you buy back within the following year; it is taken into account when you sell it again. The text speaks of any asset, and selling at a loss in December to buy the same coin back in January is exactly what that rule targets. We have not found a DGT ruling applying it expressly to cryptocurrencies, so ask before you do it.

Staking, airdrops and mining: each with its own rule

• Staking and lending: rewards are rendimientos del capital mobiliario, investment income from lending out your own capital (article 25.2) —like the interest on a deposit— and they are taxed in the base del ahorro at their value in euros on the day you receive them. The DGT said so in V1766-22 and has repeated it in V0648-24 and in V5017-26, from June 2026; for what comes in over a single day, V1766-22 allows the average rate of that day to be used. In native staking, with rewards building up in a contract that has to be claimed, they are taxed when you can dispose of them (V0612-26). When you later sell those coins, the gain is worked out under the general rules of article 35; taking as acquisition price the value they were already taxed at is the consistent approach, and it is what the DGT says expressly for airdrops, although it has not put it in those words for staking.
• Airdrops: a capital gain without a prior transfer, which goes into the general base (the one your salary is in), valued at market on the day of receipt (article 37.1.l and rulings V1948-21, V0648-24 and V5017-26). That value then becomes its acquisition value. If the token is not listed anywhere, V5017-26 says it is taxed to the extent it can be valued, and that establishing the value is a matter of evidence.
• Mining: we do not cover it here. The prior question is whether what you do is a business activity, which under the IRPF requires organising means of production or people on your own account (article 27), and the answer depends on each case.

Form 721: if you keep it abroad, report it

If on 31 December you hold more than €50,000 in cryptocurrencies held in custody by non-Spanish entities, you must file form 721 (modelo 721) between 1 January and 31 March (check here whether it applies to you). It is purely informative — nothing is paid — but failing to file it carries penalties. It was approved by Order HFP/886/2023, and the threshold and deadlines are in article 42 quater of the General Tax Management and Inspection Regulation. Crypto in your own cold wallet, whose keys you control, and crypto held by Spanish entities fall outside this obligation.

What counts as «Spanish» is not what almost everyone thinks. The regulation treats coins as located abroad when their custodian does not have to file form 172, and that form is filed only by residents of Spain and by permanent establishments here of foreign entities. A platform based in another EU country that serves customers in Spain under its European authorisation is not, for that reason alone, either of the two. Our list of authorised exchanges in Spain shows which country each provider is registered in. Large balances can also have consequences for the Wealth Tax (Impuesto sobre el Patrimonio), which is a separate tax with rules set by each region and is not covered by this guide.

Where is it declared, and on what dates?

Gains and losses from selling or swapping cryptocurrencies go on form 100 (modelo 100), the income tax return, under the heading for ganancias y pérdidas patrimoniales derivadas de la transmisión de otros elementos patrimoniales, gains and losses on the transfer of other assets. From there they pass to the base del ahorro and the bands in the table above apply. Each transfer is identified by its date, its transfer value and its acquisition value: exactly what comes out of applying FIFO, and what our tax calculator hands you already worked out.

Staking and lending rewards do not go there but under investment income (rendimientos del capital mobiliario); airdrops, in the general base. You will not find box numbers here, and that is deliberate: the numbering changes from one filing season to the next, and a wrong box does more harm than none. The Agencia Tributaria's software groups the headings by name, and that name is how you find them.

For what you do in 2026, the calendar is this:

When	What happens	Who
Up to 31 December 2026	A sale or swap counts in the tax year of the day it is made (article 14). It is the last day for a loss to offset 2026 gains.	You
31 December 2026	Snapshot for form 721: units of each coin and their value in euros that day.	You
January 2027	Platforms resident in Spain or with a permanent establishment here file form 172 (balances) and form 173 (transactions) for 2026.	The platform
1 January to 31 March 2027	Filing window for form 721 on balances at 31 December 2026.	You, if you exceed €50,000 abroad
Spring 2027	Filing season for the 2026 income tax return (form 100). The exact dates are set each year by a ministerial order; the 2025 season ran from 8 April to 30 June 2026.	You
By 30 September 2027	Deadline under the DAC8 directive for EU tax authorities to exchange what was reported for 2026.	The authorities

The income tax filing season and form 721 are two different things that should not be mixed up: filing form 721 does not replace declaring your gains, and declaring them does not exempt you from filing it.

2026: the first year the tax authority will see in full

In full does not mean everything, and it is worth separating what already arrives from what is half done. What already arrives: providers resident in Spain have reported on their customers with forms 172 and 173 since January 2024, covering 2023 transactions (Order HFP/887/2023). What DAC8 adds —Directive (EU) 2023/2226, which brings the OECD Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) into the EU— is the rest of Europe: member states had to apply it from 1 January 2026, with providers collecting their users' transactions and tax authorities exchanging them within nine months of the end of the year.

What is half done is the Spanish part. As of 16 October 2026, the consolidated text of the Ley General Tributaria, the general tax act, does not include the reform that was to bring the directive in, and Parliament was dissolved on 6 October by Royal Decree 806/2026. The finance ministry put out for consultation in March 2026 a draft order with a new form 721 for the 2026 tax year, «sobre criptoactivos situados en el extranjero», on crypto-assets located abroad; until it is published in the BOE, the 2023 form is the one in force. If it changes, this guide changes with it.

With one nuance worth understanding the other way round from how it is usually told: what arrives —or fails to arrive— through that route changes nothing about your own position. The obligation to declare belongs to the taxpayer, not to the platform, and it stands even if the exchange closes, stops serving Spain or never reported anything. Matching what the exchange reports with what you declare is an algorithm, not an inspection. If you correct late of your own accord, the surcharge is 1% plus another 1% for each full month of delay, and 15% with interest after twelve months (article 27 of the Ley General Tributaria); if the Agencia Tributaria finds it first, the penalty runs from 50% to 150% of the unpaid tax (article 191). Finding out where your platform stands is easy: the list of authorised providers comes from the official register and we publish it up to date at authorised exchanges in Spain. If you have to switch platform, the move has its own list of what is taxed and what is not in Binance alternatives in Spain.

Which mistakes cost the most money in Spain?

1. Believing that swapping one crypto for another does not count. It does, and liquid staking is an exchange too.
2. Calculating each platform separately. The FIFO queue is one per coin and taxpayer (V1550-25).
3. Using average cost because it is the default in a foreign app. The case above gives a €4,650 gain where average cost shows a loss.
4. Treating a withdrawal to your own wallet as a sale. It is not, and it does not use up any of your old purchases. What does need checking is the withdrawal fee: the DGT says its treatment depends on why you withdraw (V0648-24).
5. Not declaring losses, or declaring them without being able to support them.
6. Putting staking in the general base or airdrops in the savings base. It is the other way round.
7. Thinking a platform authorised in Europe gets you out of form 721. What decides it is whether the custodian is resident in Spain or has a permanent establishment here.

How do you keep on top of it without losing your mind?

• Export the transaction history from each exchange (CSV) at least once a year. If the exchange closes, that history disappears with it — and the obligation to justify your purchase prices does not.
• Record your swaps with their value in euros on the date of each transaction: it is the figure nobody remembers in April.
• If you make few transactions a year, a spreadsheet is enough. If you make many, check first that any software you use calculates with FIFO global per coin, not with average cost or per platform.
• The strategy that is taxed best is still the most boring one: buying and holding generates not a single euro of tax until you sell. If you want to see what the long term does for you, play with our compound interest calculator.

Frequently asked questions about cryptocurrency tax

Do I have to declare it if I swap one cryptocurrency for another?

Yes, and it is the most expensive and most common mistake. Going from Bitcoin to Ethereum is an exchange, and the Agencia Tributaria treats it as if you had sold the Bitcoin: even though you have not seen a single euro, the gain exists and has to be declared. Record the value in euros of each swap on the date of the transaction, because it is the figure nobody remembers in April.

Do I pay tax if I only buy and hold?

No. Buying with euros and holding generates no gain to declare, because there is no transfer: you can accumulate for years without declaring anything for it. Nor is it taxed to move your cryptocurrencies between wallets of your own, from the exchange to your cold wallet or between two wallets of yours. Do keep the receipts, though: you will have to be able to show the Agencia Tributaria that both ends were yours.

What is the FIFO rule, and why does it make me sell the oldest coins?

FIFO stands for first in, first out: when you have bought the same coin several times at different prices, the oldest units are deemed sold first, and you cannot choose which purchase the gain is measured against. It is the DGT's binding criterion (V1550-25), which applies to cryptocurrencies the rule the law sets for shares. If you bought 0.1 BTC for €3,000 and another 0.1 BTC for €6,000, selling 0.1 BTC takes out the €3,000 ones.

How much is paid on cryptocurrency gains?

It depends on the total gains for the year, which go into the base del ahorro of the IRPF: the first band is €6,000 at 19% and the next runs to €50,000 at 21%, and from there the rates climb in steps up to 30% on anything above €300,000. As they are progressive, on a gain of €10,000 you would pay €1,980, not 21% of the lot.

How is staking taxed?

Staking and lending rewards are rendimientos del capital mobiliario, investment income, like the interest on a deposit account, and they are taxed in the base del ahorro at their value in euros on the day you receive them. When you sell those coins there will also be a gain or a loss, and the consistent approach is to measure it against the value they were already taxed at.

Is there any point in declaring losses?

Yes, quite a lot: losses are offset against the gains of the same tax year and bring down what you pay. If the balance is still negative, it can be set against investment income up to 25% of that income, and whatever is left over is carried forward for the next four years. But only if they appear on the return: if you do not declare them, they do not exist.

When does form 721 have to be filed?

Only if on 31 December you hold more than €50,000 in cryptocurrencies held in custody by non-Spanish entities; in that case it is filed between 1 January and 31 March. For 2026 balances, between 1 January and 31 March 2027. It is purely informative and nothing is paid, but failing to file it carries penalties. What you keep in your own cold wallet, and what is held by Spanish entities, falls outside.

Sources

Consulted on 16 October 2026.

• Act 35/2006 on the IRPF, consolidated text: articles 14, 25, 27, 33, 35, 37, 46, 49, 66 and 76.
• Act 58/2003, Ley General Tributaria, consolidated text: articles 27, 191, 198 and 199 and the eighteenth additional provision.
• Royal Decree 1065/2007, article 42 quater: the €50,000 threshold, the deadline and when form 721 has to be filed again.
• Order HFP/886/2023 (form 721) and Order HFP/887/2023 (forms 172 and 173).
• Form 721 page on the Agencia Tributaria's e-office.
• DGT binding rulings: V1948-21, V1766-22, V0648-24, V1550-25, V0612-26 and V5017-26 (search by number).
• Directive (EU) 2023/2226 (DAC8).
• Royal Decree 806/2026, dissolving Parliament, and the draft order on forms 172, 175 and 721 (March 2026, unpublished).
• Agencia Tributaria press release on the 2025 income tax filing season.

Last reviewed: 16 October 2026 — every figure was checked against the consolidated text in the BOE and the DGT's rulings; the FIFO versus average cost case, the 2026-2027 calendar, liquid staking and the state of DAC8 in Spain were added, and where the FIFO rule comes from was made precise.

This content is for information only and does not constitute tax advice. For your own situation — residence, region, volumes — consult a registered tax adviser.