Austria has one of the most modern and clear legal frameworks in Europe since its 2022 eco-social tax reform. Cryptocurrencies are officially treated as capital income (like stocks or dividends).

The Austrian system is particularly favorable for investors who stake or regularly exchange their tokens. This guide explains the Austrian legislation for individuals and the steps to follow on Waltio to generate a perfectly compliant report.

In Austria, tax is levied on your net capital gains (Selling Price - Purchase Price). Cryptocurrencies receive the same treatment as traditional stocks: a special flat tax rate of 27.5%.

Another major advantage of being treated as financial assets: if you realize a loss on your cryptocurrencies, you can use it to reduce your crypto gains, as well as gains from other financial investments taxed at 27.5% (such as dividends or traditional stock sales) in the same year.

Austria has chosen the path of accounting simplification: exchanging one cryptocurrency for another (for example, selling Bitcoin to buy Ethereum or USDT) is not a taxable event. Taxation is deferred until the exit into traditional currency.

To ensure comprehensive accounting tracking, Waltio's calculation engine considers all exchange operations as taxable by default.

Your action: For your report to reflect the tax deferral provided by Austrian law, you must go to your Waltio dashboard and manually change the status of each Crypto-to-Crypto exchange operation to "Non-taxable". This way, the software will not calculate any capital gains on these intermediate trades and will correctly carry over your acquisition price.

The Austrian framework is extremely favorable for DeFi: income from staking, lending, (non-commercial) mining, and airdrops are not taxed at the time of receipt.

Excellent news: Waltio's methodology perfectly matches Austrian law.

Practical consequence: You do not need to perform any manual action. Taxation is deferred. It is only when you sell these tokens for euros that the operation becomes taxable. Since the acquisition price is €0, the entire amount of the disposal will be considered a capital gain and will be taxed at the rate of 27.5%, exactly as required by the Austrian Ministry of Finance (BMF).

Do you wish to declare upon receipt (Professional cases)?

If you carry out a mining activity on a commercial scale (which changes your tax status), you might have to declare this income immediately under progressive income tax. In this specific case, a manual process will be necessary on Waltio: you will need to individually modify each passive gain transaction to enter its acquisition price on the day of receipt, so that the operation is recognized as immediate income.

The tax event in Austria is triggered when you "realize" your gain in the traditional economy:

As soon as Waltio detects an exit to a Fiat currency, the software automatically calculates the corresponding capital gain or loss.

Disclaimer: This guide is provided for purely informational and educational purposes. Legislation surrounding digital assets is sometimes subject to interpretation (notably the distinction between private wealth management and commercial activity) and may evolve. Waltio does not provide tax or legal advice. We strongly recommend consulting a certified tax advisor (Steuerberater) in Austria to validate your personal situation, particularly for the treatment of legacy assets.