Greece's Parliament Passes Crypto Tax Law With 10% Levy on Gains

Greece Enacts a 10% Levy on Crypto Gains

Greece's parliament approved a 10% capital gains tax on cryptocurrency profits on Thursday, November 5, giving the country its first complete framework for taxing crypto assets. The crypto provisions sit inside a broader Finance Ministry package that also covers debt servicing, financial oversight and government accounting, with the new income-tax rules for crypto scheduled to apply from January 1, 2027.

The rate applies to annual net gains above €500 ($557), and the design is a cliff rather than a marginal band: once net gains cross the threshold, the 10% levy covers the entire gain, not only the portion above €500. An investor with €600 ($669) in net gains therefore owes €60 ($67), not €10 ($11). Gains are worked out by subtracting the acquisition cost from the value received at disposal, and the law treats spending crypto on goods or services as a disposal in the same way as a sale for euros. Unsold holdings that appreciate produce no tax until they are sold or spent, though investors will need transaction records showing what they paid and what their assets were worth when disposed of.

Income from staking, crypto lending and providing liquidity to DeFi protocols is taxed separately. Greece classifies those returns, which are often quoted as an APY on the underlying position, as interest income and applies a 15% rate. Rewards from automated market maker pools, which pay traders' fees and token incentives to liquidity providers, fall under the same heading, as does yield farming income. For savers who treat staking returns as crypto passive income, the interest treatment means the headline yield shrinks once tax is applied. Qualifying crypto losses above €500 ($557) can be carried forward for five years and offset against future gains. The approved rate came in below earlier plans: officials had discussed a 15% levy in June, and the October public consultation produced a 10% draft that lawmakers retained.

A 12-Month Window to Declare Old Gains

Alongside the rates, the law opens a 12-month voluntary disclosure window for previously unreported crypto income. Investors who come forward after the relevant provisions take effect can file without late-filing penalties or interest, provided they pay the tax due within 60 days of filing. A voluntary declaration does not, on its own, amount to an admission about the origin of the original principal. The bill also ties crypto purchases into Greece's presumptive income checks, which treat asset acquisitions as a form of spending: investors will need to explain where the money used to buy crypto came from, an area where records held in a crypto wallet or on an exchange account become the deciding evidence. Auditors are expected to focus on the gap between declared income and asset purchases, since the presumptive rules let the tax authority treat unexplained acquisitions as income.

On the question the government left open, Athens says exchanging one cryptocurrency for another should not itself create taxable income. A review by parliament's Scientific Service, however, flagged the law's broad reference to disposals made “for consideration”, language that could sweep token-to-token trades into the taxable base despite the accompanying explanation. The reviewers recommended an explicit exemption and clearer treatment for exchanges involving stablecoins and electronic-money tokens, a gap that lands on traders who rotate between assets without ever converting to euros. On enforcement, a senior Finance Ministry official said guidance on transaction transparency and tax audits would be issued in the coming weeks. The government has not estimated how much revenue the tax will raise, noting that many Greek investors trade on platforms based overseas, which makes the domestic market difficult to measure.

What the Wording Leaves Open

Read against the law text, three design choices will decide who pays. The €500 cliff means a small trader whose gains drift just past the threshold owes the full 10% on everything, so year-end position sizing becomes a tax decision in itself. The disclosure window functions as an amnesty ahead of enforcement, converting unreported history into clean declarations before the January 2027 start date, when transaction records begin to carry audit weight. And the unresolved swap wording leaves the most active DeFi participants waiting: until an explicit exemption arrives, a token-to-token rotation is arguably a disposal under the statute as written.