Taxation of cryptocurrencies

In Belgium gains derived from crypto assets are taxed as follows:

• Professional/work related Personal income tax
• Investment Gains are exempted from tax
• Speculation When in the view of the tax authorities someone takes extremely high risks in volatile markets (such as cryptocurrencies), which a ‘family father’ would not take. This is a rather vague description from the Belgian authorities and you easily get in a grey area, as there are no clear guidelines on what is speculative and what isn’t. In case it falls in this category, a tax rate of 33% applies. In December 2017, the Service Public Federal Finances ruled that a student that developed an application for automatically trading bitcoins (a bot) was not considered as professional activities, but did fall into the ‘speculative’ category.

In February 2018, the government department that advises the tax authorities on how to interpret legislation called for stricter enforcement of existing laws and to easier qualify investments in cryptocurrencies as ‘speculative’.