Greece now has a crypto tax. The Hellenic Parliament on Thursday 5 November approved a finance ministry bill that taxes individuals’ gains from selling crypto-assets at a flat 10%, with the main provisions applying from 1 January 2027, according to the Greek business daily Oikonomikos Tachydromos (ot.gr) and Cointelegraph. Net yearly gains of EUR 500 or less stay untaxed, swapping one coin for another is not a taxable event, and holders get 12 months to declare past gains without fines.
The headline rate is low by European standards. The details are less friendly. Under the tabled text, as summarised article by article by the Greek tax site Taxheaven, the EUR 500 exemption is a cliff rather than an allowance, a coin whose purchase price you cannot prove is treated as if it cost nothing, and staking or lending income falls under a different rate, 15%, according to Taxheaven, ot.gr and Cointelegraph.
The crypto rules are a side chapter of a much larger bill from the Ministry of National Economy and Finance, led by Kyriakos Pierrakakis, which deals mainly with private debt and loan servicers. Presenting it in the plenary on 4 November, Pierrakakis said, in our translation of the Greek reported by Eleftheros Typos: “We are establishing a clear tax framework for crypto-assets”, with a 10% rate on the capital gains of individuals.
What the Greece crypto tax law says, rule by rule
The crypto provisions sit in Articles 42 to 57, 304 and 390 of the bill tabled on 27 October, Taxheaven reported on 28 October. They amend the Income Tax Code (law 4172/2013), law 5219/2025 on inheritance and gift tax, and law 5177/2025, the code of indirect transaction taxes that contains the Digital Transaction Fee. The core is a new Article 42B of the Income Tax Code, which taxes the gain an individual makes when disposing of crypto-assets, whether by selling them for euros or by spending them on goods and services.
The gain is the sale price minus the acquisition cost. When someone buys the same asset several times, the cost is a weighted average of those purchases. Transaction costs directly linked to a trade can be added to the cost or deducted from the proceeds, with the details left to a ministerial decision, according to Taxheaven’s reading of the tabled text.
Crypto-to-crypto exchanges are not taxed, the bill’s explanatory memorandum says. A trader who rotates from bitcoin into ether, or from ether into a stablecoin, owes nothing at that point. The tax bites when the coins leave the crypto world: a sale for euros, or a payment for a product or a service, which Cointelegraph and ot.gr both describe as potentially taxable.
| Rule | What the bill provides | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Rate on disposal gains (individuals) | 10% | ot.gr, Cointelegraph, Taxheaven |
| Staking, lending, liquidity provision | Taxed as interest at 15% in the tabled bill (10% in the October draft) | Taxheaven, ot.gr, Cointelegraph |
| Exemption | Net yearly gain of EUR 500 or less; above it, the whole gain is taxed | Taxheaven, citing the explanatory memorandum |
| Crypto-to-crypto swaps | Not a taxable event | Explanatory memorandum |
| Cost you cannot prove | Counted as zero | Art. 42B(5), Taxheaven, ot.gr |
| Loss carry-forward | Five years, against crypto gains only (wording unclear for losses under EUR 500) | Taxheaven |
| Start of the gains rule | Fiscal years from 1 January 2027 | Art. 304, ot.gr, Cointelegraph |
| Amnesty window | 12 months from entry into force; tax due within 60 days of filing | Art. 49, Taxheaven |
The EUR 500 threshold is a cliff, not a free allowance
When Reuters first reported the plan in June, citing two officials, it described the first EUR 500 of gains as tax-free, as if every investor could deduct that amount. That is not how Taxheaven reads the explanatory memorandum. A net annual gain of EUR 500 or less is exempt. Once the gain goes above EUR 500, the whole amount is taxed from the first euro.
The difference is easy to see with numbers. Take a net gain of EUR 490 for the year: no tax. Take a net gain of EUR 600: under the cliff reading, the 10% applies to the full EUR 600, so EUR 60 is due. Under the allowance reading of June, only EUR 100 would be taxed, for EUR 10. For someone near the line, selling a little more in December can cost more tax than the extra gain is worth. (Cointelegraph puts EUR 500 at about $560.)
Losses count before that test. According to ot.gr, losses on crypto during a year are offset against the crypto gains of the same year, and only then is the EUR 500 threshold applied. Taxheaven adds that unused losses can be carried forward for five years, but only against future crypto gains, not against gains on shares or other capital income. It also notes that the tabled text seems to allow the carry-forward only where the yearly loss exceeds EUR 500, and flags that the wording is internally inconsistent on that point. The final law will have to settle it.
No receipt, no cost: why the zero cost basis matters most
Article 42B(5) holds what may be the most expensive rule for long-time holders. If the acquisition price cannot be established, it is deemed to be zero, according to Taxheaven’s reading of the tabled text, and ot.gr gave the same rule on 6 November. The same paragraph says costs and sale prices are taken from transaction documents issued by the crypto service provider or another intermediary, or drawn from the ledger itself. The whole sale price then becomes taxable gain.
Consider coins bought in 2017 on an exchange that has since closed, with no statement saved. Sell them for EUR 5,000 in 2027 and, without proof of cost, the taxable gain is EUR 5,000 and the tax EUR 500. With a documented cost of EUR 3,000, the gain would be EUR 2,000 and the tax EUR 200. The same logic hits blockchain and earns a reward, which makes rewriting history very expensive.">mining done outside a business: no income is recorded when the coins are mined, but their cost is zero, so the full proceeds are taxed when they are sold, the explanatory memorandum says according to Taxheaven.
For many holders the records will weigh more than the rate. Exports of trade histories, bank transfers to and from exchanges, and wallet addresses are what turn a zero into a real cost. Our guide to how to calculate crypto capital gains walks through the weighted-average method that the Greek bill uses, with worked examples.
Staking and lending income: 15% in the tabled bill
Income from staking, lending and providing liquidity is not treated as a gain on disposal. Article 47 of the bill classes it as interest under Article 37 of the Income Tax Code, taxed at the interest rate of Article 40. Taxheaven put that rate at 15% on 28 October, and ot.gr and Cointelegraph, both writing after the vote, also give 15%.
The consultation draft published on 7 and 8 October said something else. CNN Greece and other outlets that read it reported that staking and lending would be taxed as interest at 10%. None of the sources explains the change, and the final text has not been published yet. For now, a Greek holder earning yield on a staked position should assume that income is taxed more heavily than the gain on selling the coins.
A 12-month amnesty for past crypto gains
Article 49 opens a window for the past. Individuals can declare gains from earlier disposals, and earlier staking or lending income, within 12 months of the law entering into force, at the same rates as the new rules. Tax is due within 60 days of filing. Paid on time, it carries no fines and no late-payment interest, according to Taxheaven’s summary.
The amnesty has limits written into it. The tax authority AADE keeps its power to audit the source of funds, the declared costs and the supporting documents. Filing does not make the origin of the money legitimate. And only the declared gain, not the capital recovered with it, can be used to justify assets in later checks. The declaration form will be set by an AADE decision under Article 56.
That last point links to Greece’s wealth presumptions (tekmiria), the system that compares what a taxpayer spends with what they declare. Crypto purchases now count among asset-acquisition expenses, ot.gr reported, so an investor will have to show income that covers what they put in.
Greece is not the only EU state offering a way to settle earlier years. Latvia took a similar route this autumn, as we reported in our story on Latvia’s settle-the-past scheme and its plan for crypto tax payments.
From a legal gap to a 10% rate in five months
The Greek press describes the bill as filling a legislative gap. CNN Greece wrote on 8 October that it covers a “νομοθετικό κενό”, a legal vacuum, and the crypto outlet Yellow said Greece had no comprehensive framework for taxing crypto. None of the sources we read explains how gains were handled before, whether they were declared under general rules or simply left untaxed. We could not establish it, and this piece does not guess.
The rate itself moved. On 5 June, Reuters reported, citing two officials, that the finance ministry was preparing a 15% capital gains tax with a EUR 500 exemption. When the draft went to public consultation on 7 and 8 October, the rate on gains had dropped to 10%, and the ministry gave no reason. The consultation closed on 22 October, the bill was tabled on 27 October and passed on 5 November.
Some smaller items come with it. The Digital Transaction Fee will not apply to crypto sales, retroactively to 1 December 2024 (Article 54), and crypto sales made up to 30 November 2024 are exempt from stamp duty, with effect from 1 January 2021 (Article 57). From 1 January 2027, inherited or gifted crypto is treated as intangible movable property located abroad and valued at the price on recognised platforms the day before the tax obligation arises (Articles 51 to 53). Crypto received as a benefit in kind is valued at its euro value at the time of the transaction (Article 13(6) of the Income Tax Code).
Who checks, and what the Capital Market Commission gains
Collecting a tax on assets that mostly sit on foreign platforms is the hard part, and Greek officials say so. A senior finance ministry official told Reuters that the revenue cannot be forecast because most Greek investors use platforms based abroad, ot.gr reported on 5 November. Officials gave Reuters the same reason in June, when no projection existed either.
The bill gives the state some tools. The AADE governor, after consulting the Hellenic Capital Market Commission and the Bank of Greece, will set the documentation duties, how long records are kept and how information is exchanged, by ministerial decision under Article 42B(8). Implementation guidelines are expected within weeks, ot.gr reported on 5 November.
Articles 55 and 56 also give the Capital Market Commission enforcement powers over unlicensed crypto services. According to Taxheaven, it can order access to them blocked, content taken down and users redirected, with a hearing within 10 days when urgent measures are taken, and the telecoms regulator EETT will report new .gr and .ελ domains every week so they can be screened. A domain tied to an unlicensed provider is suspended for two months, then deleted. The target is firms serving Greek users without the authorisation that the EU’s MiCA rules require.
Why 2027 lines up with DAC8
The ministry has not tied the new tax to EU data sharing, though Yellow pointed out in October that tax authorities start exchanging DAC8 data in 2027. The calendar is set in the directive itself. DAC8, Directive (EU) 2023/2226, requires crypto-asset service providers to report their EU customers’ transactions to tax authorities, with 2026 as the first reporting year. Member states must exchange the first set of data by 30 September 2027.
For a Greek resident with an account on a platform licensed in another EU country, that means the platform’s reports should reach AADE through this exchange, once Greece has transposed the directive, which we could not confirm in a primary source. A tax on gains from 2027, an amnesty for the years before and a zero cost basis for anyone without records fit that timeline. The date is in our calendar entry on the first DAC8 exchange of crypto tax data.
Greece at 10%, France at 31.4% and Italy at 33%
For a European investor, the rate gap is wide. Private investors in France pay a flat tax (PFU) of 31.4% on crypto gains, 12.8% income tax plus 18.6% social levies, according to the French tax administration’s page updated on 17 July 2026, a figure ot.gr also used in its comparison. Italy’s 2025 budget law taxes crypto gains realised from 1 January 2026 at 33%, against 26% before, under Article 1(24) of Law 207/2024, and it scrapped the yearly EUR 2,000 allowance from 2025. Euro-denominated e-money tokens stay at 26%. The crypto outlet Yellow wrote in October that 10% would rank among the lower crypto tax rates in the EU, where rates run from 8% to 30%.
The French and Italian rules come with their own forms and quirks, set out in our guides to how crypto is taxed in France and to crypto tax in Italy. Rates are only part of the comparison: what counts as a taxable event, how losses are used and how cost is proved can change the bill as much as the percentage.
Moving tax residence for a rate is a decision with many other consequences, and this article does not suggest it. Greece paired its low rate with strict proof rules: a zero cost for missing records and a cliff at EUR 500.
What is still not known
No vote count for the crypto articles has been published in the sources we read. Pierrakakis asked for a roll-call vote on 18 articles of the private-debt provisions, Eleftheros Typos reported, but nothing shows the crypto chapter was contested. Pierrakakis spent most of his speech on loan servicers: the bill raises the maximum supervisory fine the Bank of Greece can impose on them tenfold, from EUR 500,000 to EUR 5 million, he told MPs according to Eleftheros Typos.
The law has not yet appeared in the Government Gazette (FEK) in any source we found, so its final number and the date it enters into force are unknown. That date matters: it starts the 12-month amnesty clock. We also do not know whether the published text keeps 15% on staking and lending, how the loss rules read in the end, how companies are taxed (Reuters reported in June that mining by registered companies would be covered), or which platforms will have to report, since those duties wait for a ministerial decision.
Nobody from the industry has reacted publicly yet. Cointelegraph, ot.gr, CNN Greece and Yellow quote no exchange, analyst or trade group. The government’s line is the one Pierrakakis gave the plenary: a clear framework where there was none. The next documents to watch are the FEK publication and AADE’s implementation guidelines, which ot.gr expects within weeks.