Until the end of 2025, crypto taxes in Belgium were simple for most people: a resident who sold bitcoin at a profit usually owed nothing, as long as the sale fitted the “normal management” of a private estate. That changed on 1 January 2026. Gains on crypto-assets realised since then are taxed at 10% above a yearly exemption. The law writes it as 4,855 euros, a base amount that indexation brings to about 10,000 euros for 2026 income, according to the government’s explanatory memorandum. The first return that shows these gains is the one filed in 2027. Nobody withholds that tax for you on crypto: you compute it and declare it yourself.
This lesson covers what the law of 6 April 2026 taxes, how the allowance and the 31 December 2025 reference value work, what happened to the old 33% rule for speculation, and what is still not settled as of October 2026. The figures come from the text published in the Moniteur belge and from the government’s explanatory memorandum filed with the bill. Nothing here is tax advice: a Belgian tax adviser should check your own situation.
General principles (why a blockchain, where users swap tokens directly from their own wallets without handing custody of their funds to a company.">swap can be a sale, why records matter) are in our introduction to how crypto is taxed, and the methods for computing a gain, FIFO included, are worked through in our guide to calculating crypto capital gains. The previous lesson of this path covered crypto taxes in the United Kingdom; here the subject is Belgium alone.
In Belgium, crypto taxes depend on how you act, not on what you hold
Belgium has no tax code chapter written only for crypto. The income tax code (CIR 92) sorts a gain by the kind of activity that produced it, and since 2026 crypto-assets are named as one of the “financial assets” of the new capital gains regime, next to shares, funds, some insurance contracts, currencies and investment gold.
The law defines crypto-assets broadly: a digital representation of a value or a right that can be transferred and stored electronically using distributed ledger technology or something similar. The definition follows the EU’s MiCA regulation and the DAC8 reporting directive. It also takes in NFTs, but only those that can be used for payment or investment. A one-off digital artwork or collectible that cannot play that role stays outside the 10% regime, according to the memorandum.
So a Belgian resident’s crypto gain lands in one of four places. Before 2026 there were three: tax-free normal management, taxable speculation, and professional income. The 2026 reform did not remove any of them. It turned the first one, which used to be tax free, into a taxable box at 10%.
| Situation (Belgian resident, individual) | Tax treatment | Legal basis | Status as of October 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gain realised from 1 January 2026 in normal management of a private estate | 10% on the part above the yearly exemption | Art. 90, al. 1, 9° c) and art. 269 §1 5° CIR 92 (law of 6 April 2026) | In force, effects from 1 January 2026 |
| Same gain, up to the yearly exemption | 0% on the first tranche: 4,855 euros in the law, about 10,000 euros after indexation for assessment year 2027 (income year 2026), per the memorandum | Art. 96/2 CIR 92; explanatory memorandum | In force |
| Gain made before 1 January 2026 | Not taxed: 31 December 2025 value used as starting point | Art. 102 §4 CIR 92 | In force |
| Speculative or abnormal operation, outside normal management | 33% plus municipal surcharge | Art. 90, al. 1, 1° and art. 171 CIR 92 | Unchanged by the reform |
| Professional activity | Progressive income tax scale | Professional income rules | Unchanged by the reform |
Normal management, speculative and professional: the three boxes
The line between the boxes is not drawn by a number of trades or a holding period written in the law. It is a question of fact, judged case by case. That is why it matters more than the 10% rate: the same 20,000 euro gain can cost 1,000 euros, 6,600 euros or more depending on the box it lands in.
Normal management of a private estate: the 10% box
Normal management means managing your savings the way a careful private investor would: buying with your own money, holding for a time, selling now and then, without making trading your occupation. Since 2026 this is where most private crypto holders should expect to sit, and it is the only box that gets the 10% rate and the yearly exemption.
For crypto, the explanatory memorandum lists four signs the tax authorities can look at when judging whether an operation was abnormal: the share of your movable wealth that you put into crypto-assets, whether you borrowed money to buy, whether you rely on an automated process or software to buy, and the number of transactions you make. None of them is a threshold. A person who keeps a modest part of their savings in bitcoin and ether, bought with their own money and sold a few times a year, fits the description of normal management far better than someone running a trading bot on borrowed funds.
Speculative or abnormal operations: still 33%
Gains from operations outside normal management, or from speculation, remain “miscellaneous income” under article 90, paragraph 1, 1° of the code, taxed at a separate rate of 33% plus the municipal surcharge set by your commune. The memorandum says so plainly: if the realisation is outside normal management or speculative, the taxpayer is taxed at 33%. The new law did not touch that rule; it only made the 10% regime a special rule placed in front of it.
The test, in the memorandum’s words translated from French, is how a “normally prudent person” in the taxpayer’s situation would have managed the assets. Several Belgian advisers, among them KPMG Belgium, write that the administration has to prove the speculative character before applying the 33% rate. KPMG also reports that the circular keeps crypto trading in the 10% regime by default and that only a combination of signs, not one of them alone, can point to speculation. That reading comes from advisers’ summaries of the July 2026 circular, which we could not read ourselves, so treat it as their interpretation.
Professional activity: the progressive scale
When crypto trading becomes an occupation (organised, frequent, with professional means, sometimes as a main source of income), gains can be taxed as professional income at the ordinary progressive income tax scale, the one that applies to wages, plus the municipal surcharge and, for self-employed people, social contributions. This box is rare for private investors, but it exists and the new law confirms it: the 10% regime applies only to gains realised outside a professional activity.
The practical lesson is that the 10% box is a privilege tied to behaviour. Leverage, bots, a large share of your wealth in crypto and hundreds of trades a year all push you towards the 33% box or beyond.
The capital gains tax since 1 January 2026
The tax comes from the law of 6 April 2026 “introducing a tax on capital gains on financial assets”, published in the Moniteur belge on 21 April 2026. Its article 35 makes it apply from 1 January 2026, so the gains of the whole 2026 calendar year are covered even though the text was published in April. The 10% rate is written into article 269 of the code. The text itself only fixes the date from which it “produit ses effets” (takes effect), 1 January 2026; Deloitte and KPMG use 1 May 2026 as the date that matters for people who left the country (see below). We found no later amendment on these points in the Chamber’s records as of October 2026.
What counts as a sale: swaps and purchases included
The tax hits the gain when you dispose of a crypto-asset for consideration. The memorandum confirms that every conversion counts: crypto into euros, and also crypto into another crypto-asset. Swapping bitcoin for ether, or ether for a stablecoin, is a realisation. So is paying for goods or services with crypto; the memorandum’s own example is buying a pizza.
Moving coins between your own wallets is not a sale. The memorandum says that in that case “smart contract holding reserves of two or more tokens, supplied by users, that a decentralized exchange uses to execute trades automatically at a price set by a formula.">pool diverge, compared with simply holding the same tokens in a wallet. It becomes permanent when the provider withdraws.">il n’y a pas de réalisation” (there is no realisation). Sending bitcoin from an exchange to your hardware wallet in self-custody therefore triggers nothing, although you should keep the transaction records to show that both addresses are yours.
How the gain is computed
The gain is the price or value received (in cash, in other assets or in any other form) minus the acquisition value, meaning the price you paid. Amounts in foreign currency, such as a sale in dollars, are converted into euros at the exchange rate of the day of purchase and of the day of sale. When you bought the same coin several times, the law applies first in, first out: the first unit bought is deemed the first unit sold.
Two details deserve attention. If you cannot prove what you paid, the whole sale price becomes taxable. Fees do not help either. The memorandum states that no cost incurred to buy or to sell the asset is taken into account, and that taxes paid on the transactions, such as the stock exchange tax, have no effect on the gain. On that reading, a platform’s trading fee is neither added to your purchase price nor taken off the sale price. Deloitte’s summary of the July 2026 circular says the same about acquisition costs.
The 10% rate and the 10,000 euro exemption
The rate is 10%. Before it applies, each taxpayer has a yearly exemption. Article 96/2 of the code, as written by the law, exempts “la première tranche de 4.855 euros” (the first 4,855 euros), because Belgian income tax amounts are written at a base level and indexed every year. According to the explanatory memorandum, the indexed amount is 10,000 euros for assessment year 2027, which is income year 2026, so about 10,000 euros is the figure to expect for 2026 gains. The amount for later years will be indexed again and published separately.
The exemption covers all ordinary gains of the same category taken together. In the law’s structure, crypto falls in the same category as listed shares, funds and the other financial assets of the regime, so a gain on shares and a gain on bitcoin draw on one 10,000 euro allowance, not two. Shareholders who own 20% or more of a company face a separate regime that does not concern crypto.
Unused allowance can be carried forward, but only partly. If you do not use the first 1,000 euros of the exemption in a year, the unused part of that 1,000 is added to the next year’s exemption. At most 1,000 euros can be carried per year, from the four previous years, so the total exemption can never exceed the base plus five times 1,000 euros: 15,000 euros, per the memorandum (the law writes the cap as 2,426 euros of extra exemption before indexation). A person who sells nothing for five years can therefore exempt 15,000 euros in the sixth. Each spouse has their own exemption, so a couple investing from common assets can reach 30,000 euros in total after five years without sales. Using the exemption every year on purpose is allowed: the memorandum says that making optimal use of it can hardly be called abuse.
Gains made before 2026 are not taxed
The reform does not reach back. For any asset bought before 1 January 2026, the law replaces the purchase price with the asset’s value on 31 December 2025. The memorandum calls this the reference date. A coin bought in 2021 for 5,000 euros, worth 30,000 euros at the end of 2025 and sold for 32,000 euros in 2026, produces a taxable gain of 2,000 euros; the 25,000 euros earned before 2026 stay untaxed.
The opposite case is covered too. For sales made until 31 December 2030, you can ask to use your proven purchase price instead of the 31 December 2025 value when the purchase price is higher. Someone who bought at 60,000 euros, saw the coin fall to 40,000 euros by the end of 2025 and sells at 50,000 euros in 2026 would otherwise show a 10,000 euro gain on paper. With the proven purchase price of 60,000 euros, the taxable gain falls to zero. It does not turn into a deductible loss, because for assets bought before 2026 the law measures losses from the 31 December 2025 value, and 50,000 is above 40,000. When you use this option, the law works with the average acquisition value of the units you held before 31 December 2025.
How exactly to value a coin on 31 December 2025 is less clear for crypto than for shares. For assets listed on a regulated or other active market, the law takes the last closing price of 2025; crypto trades around the clock and has no official close. We found no published rule on which price source to use. In practice, the safe habit is to save, for every coin you held, a dated price from your platform’s statement or from a recognised price aggregator, plus your holdings on that date. Those documents may be your only proof years from now.
Losses: same year, same category
Losses reduce gains, under two conditions set by the law: the loss must be realised by the same taxpayer in the same tax year, and in the same category of financial assets. A loss you cannot use in 2026 is not carried to 2027. The loss also has to be proven with any evidence admitted in civil law except an oath, and for assets held before 2026 it is measured from the 31 December 2025 value.
A worked example, as an illustration with invented figures. In 2026 you sell coin A, bought in 2023 and worth 20,000 euros on 31 December 2025, for 26,000 euros: a gain of 6,000 euros. Later in the year you sell coin B, bought in February 2026, with a gain of 9,000 euros, and coin C at a 2,000 euro loss. Net gain: 6,000 + 9,000 – 2,000 = 13,000 euros. After an exemption of 10,000 euros, 3,000 euros are taxed at 10%, so the tax is 300 euros. Had the sale of coin B been judged speculative, its 9,000 euro gain would be taxed at 33% with no exemption: 2,970 euros before the municipal surcharge. The 31 December 2025 reference value and the exemption belong to the 10% regime, so a speculative sale of coin A could also be measured from its real 2023 purchase price.
How to declare crypto gains in Belgium
This is where crypto differs most from shares. From 1 June 2026, Belgian banks and brokers withhold the 10% on gains made on financial instruments and certain insurance contracts held with them, unless the client opted out. The withholding does not cover crypto-assets. The memorandum explains the choice: most platforms active in this sector are not located in Belgium, so a withholding system was judged disproportionate.
You compute and declare the tax yourself
For crypto, the 10% is settled through the personal income tax return of the year in which you sold. The 2026 gains go into the return for income year 2026, assessment year 2027, filed in 2027 through Tax-on-web or on paper. You report the net taxable gain after losses, claim the exemption, and keep the evidence: purchase records, exchange statements, wallet addresses, and the 31 December 2025 values.
If you also hold shares at a Belgian bank that withheld 10% on their gains, the return is where the law has you claim the exemption, the higher purchase price for pre-2026 assets and your losses, and ask for the withholding to be credited or refunded, with supporting documents kept for the administration. Banks withhold without applying the exemption or losses, so this step matters for anyone with both shares and crypto: the two share one exemption, and only the return brings them together.
What is not published yet
As of October 2026, the exact box and code of the 2027 return for the new 10% gains have not been published, and we did not find the form. Gains taxed at 33% as speculative income have long been declared in the miscellaneous income part of the return, and professional gains in the professional income sections, but the line for the new regime will only be known when the SPF Finances publishes the 2027 forms. Do not rely on a code you read in a forum before then.
The SPF Finances issued an administrative circular on the new tax in July 2026: circular letter 2026/C/74 of 22 July 2026, as Deloitte and KPMG cite it. We could not consult the circular itself, so the points it may address for crypto (treatment of fees, the price source for 31 December 2025, foreign platforms) are presented here as not settled.
What the tax authorities will see anyway
Self-declaration does not mean invisibility. The EU directive known as DAC8 (Directive (EU) 2023/2226) requires crypto-asset service providers to collect data on their EU customers’ transactions from 1 January 2026 and report it to tax authorities, who exchange it between member states. Belgium’s Chamber approved the bill transposing it in March 2026, according to Bloomberg Tax. The first reports, covering 2026, are due in 2027 (see our calendar entry on the first DAC8 exchanges). The OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework extends the same idea to countries outside the EU. By the time a Belgian return for 2026 is checked, the SPF Finances may already hold the platform’s own figures.
Staking, lending, airdrops and mining: what the new tax does not settle
The 10% regime taxes the gain made when you dispose of a crypto-asset: price received minus acquisition value. It says nothing about income received while holding crypto, such as staking rewards, interest from lending platforms or mining. Neither the law nor the explanatory memorandum, in the passages we searched, addresses staking.
Airdrops get one sentence. When you receive coins through an airdrop, the memorandum sets their acquisition value at their value on the day they are granted to you. When you later sell them, the gain is measured from that value, so keep a dated record of it. Whether the airdrop itself is income when received is not addressed.
Belgian advisers point to advance rulings issued in 2022 by the Ruling Commission (the Service des décisions anticipées), which they report treated some staking and liquidity rewards as movable income taxed at 30%. We could not open those rulings, and a ruling binds the administration only for the person who asked for it. As of October 2026 we found no official SPF Finances position on staking rewards or forks under the new regime.
Two consequences are clear enough. First, a reward you receive and later sell can be relevant twice: possibly as income when received, then as a gain on disposal, where the question of its acquisition value arises. Second, mining at scale with dedicated equipment looks more like a professional activity than normal management. For anything beyond small amounts of staking, ask a Belgian adviser or an advance ruling.
Moving to or leaving Belgium
The regime is part of the personal income tax of Belgian residents. If you move to Belgium, the law sets your acquisition value at the value of the asset on your first day of Belgian taxation, so gains made before your arrival are not taxed in Belgium.
Leaving is treated differently. The law treats the transfer of your domicile or seat of fortune outside Belgium as a sale, at the value of the assets on the day you leave: an exit tax on gains not yet realised. Payment is deferred automatically if you move to another EU or EEA state, or to a country whose tax treaty with Belgium provides for exchange of information and help with recovery; elsewhere, a deferral needs a sufficient guarantee. The deferral ends if you sell the assets. According to the memorandum, the tax is in the end only due if you sell within two years of leaving, and the obligation lapses if you come back to Belgium within that period. A yearly certificate keeps the deferral alive; its content is left to a royal decree.
On timing, Deloitte and KPMG write that residents who emigrated before 1 May 2026 are outside the new tax, while those who left later are caught by it for gains realised before departure and by the exit rules. Deloitte adds that these leavers cannot report the gains in the special non-resident return, which does not yet include the new regime. Anyone planning a move should get advice before leaving.
Non-residents are, according to the same advisers, outside the new tax. A UK or US resident who holds an account at a Belgian-linked platform is therefore taxed at home, not in Belgium.
US citizens and UK residents with ties to Belgium
Americans living in Belgium face two systems. The IRS taxes US citizens and resident aliens on their worldwide income wherever they live, so a sale made in Belgium is reported on the US return as well (the US rules are in our lesson on crypto taxes in the United States). The IRS foreign tax credit, claimed on Form 1116, can generally offset US tax with foreign income tax paid on the same income. The Belgian 10,000 euro exemption has no US equivalent, so a gain fully exempt in Belgium can still be taxable in the US, in dollars, at US rates. How the US-Belgium tax treaty applies to crypto gains is a question for a cross-border adviser; we did not verify it.
UK residents are taxed in the UK on their crypto gains under capital gains tax, as explained in the previous lesson, and Belgium does not tax non-residents under the new regime. A Briton who moves to Belgium starts a Belgian history on their first day of residence, with the arrival value as the starting point. The platforms they use will report under DAC8 or the OECD framework depending on where they are based. Switzerland and Canada, with very different systems, are the subjects of later lessons in this path.
Mistakes that cost money in 2026 and 2027
The most expensive one is not saving the 31 December 2025 values. Without them, you may have to rebuild prices from incomplete records, and if you cannot prove an acquisition value, the whole sale price can be taxed.
The second is assuming that an exchange will withhold the tax. Belgian banks withhold on shares and funds; nobody withholds on crypto. If you sold in 2026, the declaration is yours.
The third is forgetting that a swap is a sale. A year of trading between altcoins and stablecoins, without ever cashing out to euros, can still produce a taxable gain at the end of 2026.
The fourth concerns losses. A loss realised in 2027 cannot reduce a 2026 gain, and a 2026 loss cannot be carried to later years. Timing a sale in the right calendar year is the only lever.
The last is behaviour. Borrowing to buy crypto, using bots, putting most of your wealth into crypto and trading hundreds of times a year are the very signs the memorandum names. They can move you out of the 10% box and into the 33% one, without the exemption.
For the next filing season, the dates to watch are the publication of the 2027 return forms by the SPF Finances and the indexed exemption amount for 2027 income.
