德国将终止比特币免税并降低交易者税率

Everyone is reporting a tax rise. Do the arithmetic and Germany is cutting the top rate for active traders by nineteen points, from 45% to 26.375%. The people getting hit are the ones who buy and sit on it, which until now was the whole point of holding crypto in Germany.

Summary Germany’s Federal Ministry of Finance circulated a draft bill on September 9 that would end the country’s one-year tax-free holding period for cryptocurrency, replacing it with the flat capital income tax.

The rate is 25% plus the 5.5% solidarity surcharge, an effective 26.375% before any church tax, applied regardless of how long an asset is held.

The cutoff is December 31, 2026: assets bought on or after January 1, 2027 fall under the new regime, while earlier purchases would remain under existing rules.

Short-term traders would pay less. Gains realised inside twelve months are currently taxed at personal income rates reaching 45%, so moving them to a flat 26.375% is a reduction.

This is the fourth attempt in roughly eighteen months, and the first to sit inside the budget bill, which is considerably harder to strip out than a standalone motion.

Hold a coin in Germany for twelve months and one day and the gain is yours, untaxed, no cap, no form, no rate to look up. That rule has quietly made Germany the best place in Europe to be a long-term crypto holder, and it was never designed for crypto at all. It came from a provision written for art and gold coins, which German tax authorities applied to digital assets because that is the drawer they fit in.

On September 9 the Finance Ministry circulated a draft to close it.

The coverage has gone straight to “Germany taxes crypto,” which is true and misses the more interesting half. The bill moves crypto into the Abgeltungsteuer, the flat withholding tax that already covers shares and dividends. That rate is 25%, or 26.375% once you add the solidarity surcharge. Sell inside a year today and you pay your personal income rate, which reaches 45%.

So the same bill that takes away the exemption hands active traders a cut of nearly nineteen percentage points.

Germany is not raising crypto tax. It is deleting the distinction between holding and trading, and the people who built their position around that distinction are the ones who pay for it.

What the draft actually says

Two dates, which is why half the coverage says 2027 and the other half says 2028. Both are right about different things.

The regime. Crypto gains would move into the Abgeltungsteuer, Germany’s flat withholding tax on capital income. The headline rate is 25%. The solidarity surcharge adds 5.5% of the tax itself, producing an effective 26.375%. Church tax applies on top for those who pay it.

The cutoff. Assets acquired on or after January 1, 2027 fall under the new treatment. Assets bought on or before December 31, 2026 would remain under the current rules, which is the grandfathering provision, though the draft’s treatment of it has been described as not fully confirmed.

JUST IN: Germany’s Finance Ministry wants a 25% tax on crypto profits, which could start as early as 2028

The ministry expects to collect an extra €160 million in 2028, rising to €350 million a year by 2031 pic.twitter.com/o02Wo898sT — crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) September 10, 2026

The withholding start. Crypto service providers would be required to withhold the tax automatically from January 1, 2028, a year after the law’s effective date, giving platforms time to build the systems. That gap is why some coverage dates the change to 2027 and other coverage to 2028. Both are describing the same bill.

The documentation trap. Providers may rely on purchase prices and acquisition dates supplied by customers when assets move between platforms. An investor who cannot produce that documentation faces the flat 25% applied to the full proceeds, with no deduction for the original cost. That provision has received almost no attention and it is the one most likely to produce unpleasant surprises, because self-custodied assets moved onto a platform years after purchase are exactly the case it captures.

What else changes. Income from crypto lending and staking would be reclassified as capital income, bringing it under the same regime. Investors would receive the standard 1,000 euros savings allowance. And crypto losses could be offset against gains from securities, which is not currently possible and is a meaningful improvement for anyone running both.

Who pays more and who pays less

Here is who wins and who loses, which also tells you who will fight it.

Long-term holders lose the most. Someone buying in February 2027 and selling in 2029 currently pays nothing. Under the draft they pay 26.375% on the full gain. That is the entire tax break, removed, for anyone entering after the cutoff.

Short-term traders gain. Someone buying and selling inside twelve months currently pays their marginal income rate, up to 45% for high earners. Under the draft they pay 26.375%. For an active trader in the top bracket, that is a reduction of roughly nineteen percentage points on every realised gain.

Loss-makers gain. Offsetting crypto losses against securities gains is new and useful, and it applies across a portfolio instead of within an asset class.

JUST IN: Thailand confirms 0% capital gains tax on crypto

The exemption applies to trades conducted through licensed exchanges pic.twitter.com/8Y6tyQhNNO — crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) August 7, 2026

Stakers and lenders face a rate change of uncertain direction, depending on how their income is currently treated and what bracket they occupy.

So the bill is redistributive within the crypto-holding population, not simply extractive from it. The people it hurts are the ones the current system was designed to favour, and the people it helps are the ones the current system taxed hardest. Whether that is good policy depends on whether you think a tax system should encourage holding over trading, which is a real argument with a long history in capital gains policy generally.

The ministry’s own justification points that way. Its position, as reported, is that crypto assets increasingly represent a form of private capital investment and should not remain favoured relative to other income types. That is an equalisation argument, not a revenue argument, and the revenue figures support the reading.

The revenue is small

If this were a money grab, the numbers would be bigger.

Around 160 million euros in additional revenue in 2028, rising to roughly 350 million euros annually by 2031. Against a federal budget measured in hundreds of billions of euros, that is a rounding error. One estimate cited a figure near 350 million euros as the steady-state expectation.

Two things follow. If the motivation were revenue, this is an enormous amount of legislative and administrative effort for very little money, which supports the equalisation reading. And the projections themselves deserve scepticism, because the comparable case went badly.

Austria made the same shift in 2022, moving crypto into a flat capital gains regime, and analysts tracking this proposal note it raised considerably less than officials expected. The reason is not mysterious. A tax on realised gains only collects when people realise, and removing the incentive to hold does not automatically create an incentive to sell. It can equally produce holders who simply never dispose, or who dispose elsewhere.

Why this attempt is different

One fact has appeared in a single outlet and it is the most important thing in the story.

This is the fourth push in roughly eighteen months to scrap the one-year rule. The previous three came from the Left Party, from the Greens, and from coalition budget talks, and all three failed. In May, the Finance Committee voted down a Green Party proposal to end the tax-free treatment, with the CDU/CSU, the Social Democrats, and the AfD all opposing it for differing reasons, while Die Linke supported it with reservations.

What changed is procedural. This version sits inside the budget bill instead of standing alone. A standalone motion can be voted down on its own merits by a coalition that disagrees about it. A provision inside a budget is voted on as part of a package that the government needs to pass, and stripping it requires a specific fight that someone has to want badly enough to have.

The political groundwork also differs. Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil signalled the direction in April during the 2027 budget presentation, saying the government intended to tax cryptocurrencies differently, and confirmed at a July press conference that a concrete bill was in preparation. That is a minister building toward a proposal over months, not a party tabling a motion.