Germany: filing and deadlines

This page covers when and how to report crypto to the German tax office (Finanzamt). How the tax is calculated is on personal tax and business tax. It is general information, not tax advice; dates set in a letter from your tax office come first.

Deadline calendar

The dates below are for the 2025 tax year, based on the Fiscal Code (AO) and the Income Tax Act. Later years follow the same pattern. When a deadline falls on a weekend or public holiday, it moves to the next working day (section 108(3) AO).

Date	What	Who
10 March, 10 June, 10 September, 10 December	Income tax prepayments, if the tax office has set them (section 37 EStG)	Individuals
31 July 2026	Income tax return 2025 due, if you file it yourself (section 149(2) AO). The same deadline applies to corporate, trade tax and annual VAT returns	Individuals and companies
1 March 2027	Return 2025 due if a tax adviser prepares it (end of February of the second following year, section 149(3) AO; 28 February 2027 is a Sunday)	Individuals and companies with an adviser
1 April 2027	Interest on tax due for 2025 starts to run, 15 months after the end of the year (section 233a AO)	Individuals and companies
31 July 2027	First KStTG report on 2026 to the Federal Central Tax Office	Crypto providers

Individuals

Do you have to file?

• Employees. If you only have salary taxed through payroll, you must still file if your other taxable income, such as taxable crypto gains or staking rewards, was more than €410 in the year (section 46(2) no. 1 EStG). Crypto gains below the €1,000 limit are tax-free and do not count.
• Self-employed people and others without payroll tax generally file every year (section 25(3) EStG).
• If the tax office asks you to file, you must, even if you think you owe nothing (section 149(1) AO).

Crypto in the return

Crypto goes in the form Anlage SO (other income). According to the ELSTER help for the 2025 form:

• Private sales: crypto sold or swapped within one year of buying goes in lines 45 to 49 and 56 and 57. If your total gains from private sales were below €1,000, you do not have to enter them; for joint filers the limit applies to each person. Do enter losses, so they can be carried forward.
• Rewards: income from mining, forging, passive staking, lending and airdrops goes in lines 14 to 21, unless it is business or capital income.
• Inherited or gifted coins: the tax office attributes the purchase by the previous owner to you, so their purchase date counts for the holding period.

You file electronically through ELSTER, the tax authorities’ online portal, or with a tax adviser or, for employees with simple cases, a wage tax help association (Lohnsteuerhilfeverein).

Extension and late filing

The tax office can extend filing deadlines on request (section 109 AO). It is best to ask before the deadline. Filing late without an extension can lead to a late-filing surcharge, and tax that is paid late carries interest; see penalties.

Companies

Corporate income tax, trade tax and annual VAT returns follow the same deadlines: 31 July of the following year, or the end of February of the second following year when a tax adviser prepares them (section 149 AO). For the 2025 year that is 31 July 2026 or 1 March 2027. The tax office can ask for a return earlier. Businesses must also keep books and records as described under records.

What providers report (KStTG)

Germany implements the EU directive DAC8 and the OECD Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) in the Kryptowerte-Steuertransparenz-Gesetz (KStTG). The duties apply for the first time for calendar year 2026 (section 21 KStTG).

• Who reports: crypto service providers authorized under MiCA, and crypto operators without such an authorization that serve customers in the EU.
• What: customer data such as name, address, tax residence and tax identification number, and the customer’s transactions per type of crypto-asset.
• When: every year by 31 July for the previous year, to the Federal Central Tax Office (BZSt), which passes the data to the tax offices and to the tax authorities of other countries (section 9 KStTG). The first report, on 2026, is due by 31 July 2027.
• Telling customers: before the first report, providers must tell each customer that data is collected and reported (section 13 KStTG).
• Registration and fines: operators without a MiCA authorization must register with the BZSt (section 17 KStTG). Breaches can be fined up to €50,000 (section 18 KStTG).

For you as a user nothing changes in how you file, but from 2027 the tax office will receive data on crypto held at providers.

Records to keep

The BMF letter of 6 March 2025 (paragraphs 87 to 105) says what the tax office expects:

• Heightened duty with foreign or decentralized exchanges. If you trade on an exchange run by a foreign operator or on a decentralized exchange, you must clarify the facts and procure the evidence yourself (section 90(2) AO). That includes downloading the exchange’s full transaction histories regularly. Missing records and lost data, for example after an exchange’s insolvency or a hack, count against you (paragraph 89).
• What to record per sale: the coin and amount, the purchase and sale date and price, and the holding period. For a fuller record: the type of acquisition (purchase, swap, mining, staking, lending, airdrop), the exchange used, fees in euros, the price source, the method used per wallet (FIFO, average) and any moves between wallets (paragraphs 102 and 103).
• Tax reports from software are accepted if they are plausible. You must show the settings used, such as the price source and the method, and the tax office can ask for the underlying exports and, as a last step, screenshots of wallets or exchange accounts (paragraphs 90 and 101).
• How long: private individuals have no general retention period, but you must be able to prove your figures for as long as the tax can be assessed. If your income from non-business sources exceeds €500,000 a year (from 2027: €750,000), you must keep records for six years (section 147a AO). Businesses keep books and annual accounts for ten years, accounting vouchers for eight years and other relevant documents for six years (section 147 AO).

If records are missing, the tax office estimates the tax base (section 162 AO), using what you can provide.

Penalties and voluntary disclosure

Situation	Consequence (law as published, October 2026)
Annual return filed late	Late-filing surcharge of 0.25% of the assessed tax (minus prepayments) per month started, at least €25 per month, at most €25,000 (section 152 AO)
Tax paid after the interest start date	Interest of 0.15% per month, 1.8% a year (sections 233a and 238 AO)
Tax understated through gross negligence (leichtfertig)	Administrative fine of up to €50,000 (section 378 AO); no fine if you correct it before proceedings are announced to you
Tax evasion (on purpose)	Criminal offence: prison of up to five years or a fine (section 370 AO)

Voluntary disclosure (Selbstanzeige). If you deliberately left out crypto income, you can avoid punishment by correcting all evaded taxes of that type of tax in full, for at least the last ten calendar years (section 371 AO). It no longer works once a tax audit has been announced, proceedings have started or the evasion was already discovered and you knew it or had to expect it. Above €25,000 of evaded tax per offence, punishment is avoided only if you also pay the tax, interest and an extra 10% to 20% of the evaded tax (section 398a AO). Get professional help: an incomplete disclosure does not protect you. With KStTG data arriving from 2027, the tax office will increasingly know about crypto held at providers.

Sources

• Gesetze im Internet: Abgabenordnung, § 149 (last checked October 2026)
• Gesetze im Internet: Abgabenordnung, § 108 (last checked October 2026)
• Gesetze im Internet: Abgabenordnung, § 109 (last checked October 2026)
• Gesetze im Internet: Einführungsgesetz zur Abgabenordnung, Art. 97 § 36 (transitional deadlines up to 2024) (last checked October 2026)
• Gesetze im Internet: Einkommensteuergesetz, § 37 (last checked October 2026)
• Gesetze im Internet: Einkommensteuergesetz, § 46 (last checked October 2026)
• Gesetze im Internet: Einkommensteuergesetz, § 25 (last checked October 2026)
• ELSTER: Hilfe zur Einkommensteuererklärung 2025 (Anlage SO) (last checked October 2026)
• BMF: Einzelfragen zur ertragsteuerrechtlichen Behandlung bestimmter Kryptowerte (6 March 2025) (last checked October 2026)
• Gesetze im Internet: Kryptowerte-Steuertransparenz-Gesetz (§§ 9, 13, 17, 18, 21) (last checked October 2026)
• BZSt: DAC8, Registrierung (last checked October 2026)
• Gesetze im Internet: Abgabenordnung, § 147 (last checked October 2026)
• Gesetze im Internet: Abgabenordnung, § 147a (last checked October 2026)
• Gesetze im Internet: Abgabenordnung, § 152 (last checked October 2026)
• Gesetze im Internet: Abgabenordnung, § 233a (last checked October 2026)
• Gesetze im Internet: Abgabenordnung, § 238 (last checked October 2026)
• Gesetze im Internet: Abgabenordnung, § 370 (last checked October 2026)
• Gesetze im Internet: Abgabenordnung, § 371 (last checked October 2026)
• Gesetze im Internet: Abgabenordnung, § 378 (last checked October 2026)
• Gesetze im Internet: Abgabenordnung, § 398a (last checked October 2026)

This page is general information, not tax advice. Rules, amounts and dates change, so check the official sources above and any letter from your tax office before you act.