Crypto Tax in Luxembourg 2026: 0% After Six Months

There is, in this series, one country where a private individual legally brings their crypto capital gain down to 0% without any tax structuring: no holding company, no trust, no exotic expatriation. They just have to wait. The rule fits in six words in Article 99bis of the Luxembourg income tax law (the “loi concernant l’impôt sur le revenu”, L.I.R.): “six months for the other assets”.

Beyond that period, the gain of an individual who manages their private wealth falls into none of the categories of taxable income. It isn’t an exemption you apply for: there is simply no taxable event. Compared with France’s 31.4% flat tax, due from the first euro of gain above €305 of annual disposals, the gap is the starkest in the whole series.

But this 0% comes at a price, and almost nobody writes about it. A loss incurred beyond six months can’t be deducted from anything. Within six months, there is neither a €50,000 allowance nor a half-rate — the two advantages that the Luxembourg press and advisory firms cite constantly are reserved for other articles of the law, in which crypto capital gains don’t appear. What follows covers 2026 income, declared by 31 December 2027 at the latest, up to date as of 3 September 2026. Every figure is backed by an official text, with the link provided; when no source settles a point, we say so instead of making things up.

The essentials at a glance

• More than six months of holding: 0%. No conditional exemption, no cap, no form — simply no taxable event at all.
• Six months or less: progressive scale from 0 to 42%, plus a 7% or 9% employment fund surcharge, plus 1.4% dependency (long-term care) contribution. Calculated maximum marginal burden: 47.18%.
• Annual exemption threshold of €500: a cliff-edge threshold, not an allowance, and one that aggregates all your speculation gains for the year, not just crypto.
• A crypto-to-crypto exchange is taxable within six months, and FIFO is prohibited: the administrative doctrine requires the weighted average price.
• The flip side of the rule is brutal: a loss beyond six months can’t be set against anything, and speculation losses aren’t carried forward to later years.
• Neither the €50,000 allowance nor the half-rate for a crypto capital gain: the “Extraordinary income” page of the return mustn’t be filled in.
• A short position is never entitled to the six months, and no Luxembourg text covers derivatives, staking, lending, airdrops or NFTs.
• No step-up on arrival: moving to Luxembourg in order to sell wipes nothing out until the six months have elapsed.

A country with no crypto tax, and that’s the starting point

Luxembourg has adopted no tax text setting a regime specific to crypto-assets: the only Luxembourg tax law that names them, that of 27 March 2026, deals only with information exchange and doesn’t create a single euro of tax. They do appear elsewhere — the law of 6 February 2025 designates the CSSF (Luxembourg’s financial regulator) as the competent authority for MiCA — but that’s supervisory law, not tax law. The general rules on movable property suffice, and the one existing administrative document merely explains how it applies: the circular of the Director of Taxes L.I.R. No. 14/5 – 99/3 – 99bis/3 of 26 July 2018. Four pages, two principles. First, “virtual currencies do not constitute a currency”; with regard to income tax, commercial tax and net wealth tax, they “constitute intangible assets”.

Second — and it’s this principle that produces the 0%: “income is taxable only if it falls within one of the categories of income listed in Article 10 L.I.R.”. There is no catch-all category in Luxembourg. If your gain doesn’t fit any box, it isn’t lightly taxed: it isn’t taxed at all. For an individual, the only two boxes that can apply are commercial profit, which presupposes a business, and miscellaneous net income, which presupposes speculation.

The six-month rule, in detail

The consolidated text in force on 1^st January 2026 provides in Article 99bis, paragraph 1 that “disposals of assets recently acquired for consideration” are taxable, assets being deemed recently acquired when the interval between acquisition and realisation doesn’t exceed “five years for immovable property” and “six months for the other assets”. A cryptocurrency is an “other asset”: six months and a day after purchase, its disposal falls outside the scope.

What counts as a realisation

Many people believe that only converting back to euros triggers anything. That’s false. Article 102, paragraph 1a lays down that “the exchange of assets is to be regarded as a disposal for consideration of the asset given in exchange, followed by the acquisition for consideration of the asset received in exchange”, and the circular applies it word for word to crypto — exchange for another virtual currency, for euros, or “when settling a transaction, notably the purchase of a good or a service”.

An ETH → BTC swap is therefore a disposal, even if no euro has left the platform, and the unit received starts afresh with a new acquisition price and a new clock. The consequence is counter-intuitive for anyone who practises day trading: a very active portfolio never crosses the six-month mark. Luxembourg’s 0% isn’t a trader’s regime, it’s a holder’s regime.

Weighted average price, and not FIFO

It’s the technical point that nearly all software handles badly by default. When “individual identification of the currency exchanged proves, given the circumstances, difficult or even impossible”, the circular requires determining the acquisition price “according to the weighted average price method, to the exclusion of the so-called first-in, first-out or last-in, first-out methods”. A tax report produced under FIFO doesn’t comply with Luxembourg doctrine, and if you accumulate by DCA, the gap between the two methods is anything but symbolic.

The holding period, however, is still assessed lot by lot: “the speculation gain is to be determined only for those of the currencies for which it cannot be excluded […] that they are held for a period of less than or equal to six months”. An average price for valuation, lot-by-lot reasoning for the calendar.

The burden of proof is on you

The circular refers to paragraph 171 of the General Tax Law of 22 May 1931: you must keep “consistent and continuous documentation covering in particular the date of acquisition or creation of the virtual currency, as well as the related costs”, and “the burden of proof of the holding period […] thus lies with the taxpayer”. No history means no proof of six months; no proof of six months means you’re within the scope, and a properly kept trading journal is far more than an organisational convenience here. Everything is also counted in euros, at the rate on the day the amounts are made available: the taxpayer is permitted neither to draw up accounts nor to declare taxable income in virtual currency.

What the 0% costs

This is the blind spot of every article that sells Luxembourg as a crypto paradise. The six-month rule is a border, and a border cuts both ways.

A loss beyond six months is worth nothing

If the out-of-period gain isn’t taxable, the out-of-period loss isn’t deductible. It offsets nothing: neither a speculation gain of the same year, nor a salary, nor anything at all. Selling at a loss after eight months, then making a quick gain elsewhere in the year, means paying full tax on the gain without being able to set the loss against it.

Even within the period, offsetting remains narrow: Article 102, paragraph 14 provides that losses under Article 99bis “may be offset against positive income arising under the same article”, with any excess offsettable only against the income of Articles 99ter to 101. Never against a salary, never against rental income, and no carry-forward to later years is provided: a catastrophic year earns you no credit.

Neither a €50,000 allowance nor a half-rate

It’s the costliest mistake, because reputable sources lead people into it. You’ll read everywhere that Luxembourg grants a ten-year allowance of €50,000, raised to €100,000 for a couple assessed jointly, and a half-rate on extraordinary income. Both exist. Neither concerns crypto.

Article 130, paragraph 4 reserves the allowance for “the sum of the income referred to in Articles 99ter to 101”. Article 132, paragraph 2, number 2 reserves the half-rate for “net income referred to in Articles 99ter, 100 and 101”. In both lists, Article 99bis is absent: a speculation gain, whatever its amount, is taxed at the full rate of the scale.

The trap got worse this year. The law of 3 February 2026 rewrote paragraph 1a of Article 99bis and amended paragraph 3 of Article 132, which now extends a quarter of the overall rate to “income referred to in Article 99bis, paragraph 1a, number 1”. So since 2026 there is indeed a quarter rate inside Article 99bis — but it targets the carried interest of alternative fund managers, and nothing else. Your capital gain falls under paragraph 1, not paragraph 1a.

Benefit	Text	Income covered	Crypto capital gain?
€50,000 / €100,000 allowance	Art. 130, para. 4	Articles 99ter to 101	No
Half-rate on extraordinary income	Art. 132, para. 2, no. 2	Articles 99ter, 100 and 101	No
Quarter rate (new in 2026)	Art. 132, para. 3, no. 2	Art. 99bis, para. 1a, no. 1	No: carried interest
Annual exemption threshold	Art. 99bis, para. 2	Speculation gains	Yes, €500 only
Loss carry-forward to later years	—	No text provides for it	No

Direct consequence for your return: the “Extraordinary income” page, with its request to apply the rates of Article 131, must not be filled in for crypto. Ticking it means claiming a regime that the law doesn’t entitle you to.

Below six months: the complete calculation

Three tiers, and the third is almost always forgotten. The scale of Article 118 has twenty-three brackets, from 0% below €13,230 to 42% above €234,870; it comes from the law of 20 December 2024, applies “from tax year 2025” and hasn’t been touched for 2026. On top of that comes the employment fund surcharge, which hits the tax and not the income: “the surcharge rate is 7% and, beyond adjusted taxable income of €150,000 in tax classes 1 and 1a or €300,000 in tax class 2, 9%” (the Direct Taxes Administration, ACD), the higher rate applying to all the tax due, not just the excess portion.

Third tier: the 1.4% dependency contribution (long-term care), based on net income and not on tax. As the allowance of a quarter of the social minimum wage is reserved for salaries and replacement income, it bites from the first taxable euro of investment income. Maximum marginal burden, once calculated: 42% × 1.09 = 45.78%, plus 1.4%, i.e. 47.18% — a calculated number, not a published rate as such.

The €500 exemption is a cliff edge

Article 99bis, paragraph 2 is crystal clear: “speculation gains are not taxable when the total gain realised during the calendar year is less than 500 euros”. Two wrong readings are circulating, and both are costly.

It isn’t an allowance: at €499 of total gain you owe nothing, at €501 it’s the whole €501 that enters taxable income, not €1. And it isn’t a crypto exemption: the text covers the total gain realised under the article, which aggregates everything you resell within the period — shares, gold, a collector’s watch, short sales, crypto, and even a building disposed of within five years of its acquisition. A calculation that nets only crypto crosses the threshold too late and under-taxes.

Julien, a Luxembourg resident, class 1

A deliberately simple case, with €60,000 of adjusted taxable income excluding crypto: the marginal bracket is then 39%.

2026 transaction	Holding	Result	Treatment
2 ETH bought in January, resold in May	4 months	+€3,000	Speculation gain, taxable
0.3 BTC bought in 2025, resold in June	16 months	+€12,000	Outside the scope: €0 of tax
SOL bought in November 2025, sold in September	10 months	−€4,000	Outside the scope: loss wasted
Taxable base for the year	—	€3,000	Above the €500 exemption threshold

Corresponding tax: 3,000 × 39% = €1,170, increased by 7% for the employment fund, i.e. €1,251.90, plus €42 of dependency contribution — €1,293.90 in total. Change a single parameter: Julien sells his SOL at a loss after five months instead of ten. The loss becomes deductible, 3,000 − 4,000 gives a negative result, and he owes nothing. Same portfolio, same loss, same gain: a €1,293.90 difference that comes down purely to timing.

The cliff is just as dizzying the other way: with the same other income, a €40,000 capital gain costs €17,252 if sold in the fifth month (40,000 × 39% × 1.07, plus 1.4%), and €0 if sold in the seventh. No other country in the series shows such a discontinuity — in France, the tax is the same on the first day and in the tenth year.

Transaction by transaction

Transaction	Taxable?	Regime and point to watch
Purchase for euros	No	Sets the acquisition price and starts the six-month clock.
Sale for euros, crypto-to-crypto exchange	Depends on the duration	Art. 99bis if holding ≤ 6 months; outside the scope beyond.
Payment for goods or a service	Depends on the duration	Same. On the seller’s side, the nature of the income doesn’t change.
Transfer between your own wallets	No	No transfer of ownership.
Short sale, shorting	Yes, always	Art. 99bis, para. 1, no. 2: no holding-period condition.
Perpetuals, futures, options, CFDs	Not settled	No text. See the dedicated section.
Mining	Yes	Commercial profit as a general rule; otherwise art. 99, no. 3.
Staking, lending, airdrops, NFTs	Not settled	No administrative position published to date.
Gift, inheritance	Not for income tax	The beneficiary takes over the price and the acquisition date.
Theft, hacking, lost keys, exchange bankruptcy	No, and no deduction	No disposal, hence no deductible loss.
Holding	No	No wealth tax for individuals.

Two rows deserve a word. Gift and inheritance: Article 102, paragraphs 3 and 4 requires using the price paid by the last holder who acquired for consideration, with the beneficiary “deemed to have acquired the asset in question at the time it was acquired” by that last holder. Gifting a crypto bought the day before so that a relative resells it doesn’t turn a speculative gain into an out-of-scope gain; conversely, an inherited token held for three years by the deceased can be resold immediately, outside the scope. Theft, hacking and exchange bankruptcy: Article 99bis requires a “realisation” and Article 102, paragraph 1a a “disposal for consideration” — no disposal, no deductible loss: a conclusion drawn from the absence of a taxable event in the texts, which no administrative position has ever confirmed.

Derivatives, leverage, perpetuals: what nobody knows

If you take positions on futures contracts with leverage, you’ll find dozens of pages online claiming to set out a Luxembourg regime for your perpetuals. Here is the check nobody seems to have done. The circular of 26 July 2018 is the only administrative doctrine on the subject, no later circular has replaced it, and it’s four pages long. We downloaded it and re-read it word by word on 3 September 2026: it contains no occurrence of the words derivative, future, option, leverage, perpetual, CFD or margin. It deals with three things and three only — disposal, exchange and mining.

What is certain

A short position is never entitled to the six months. Article 99bis, paragraph 1, number 2 covers “disposal transactions where the disposal of the assets precedes the acquisition”, without any holding-period condition. A short sale falls within the scope even if it stays open for two years: the protective rule works only on the buy side.

Leverage mechanically brings you closer to the commercial regime. “Recourse to borrowed capital” is literally one of the four commerciality indicators listed by the circular. Trading on margin means ticking one indicator out of four by definition; adding a dedicated workstation and a sustained pace of round trips means ticking three.

What is not

The classification of the gain on a cash-settled derivative held in private wealth has never been settled. Four readings are defensible, and they don’t give the same result.

• Realisation of a recently acquired “asset” (art. 99bis, para. 1, no. 1) — debatable, since a cash-settled contract isn’t obviously an asset you hold.
• Transaction where the disposal precedes the acquisition (art. 99bis, para. 1, no. 2) — natural for a short position, artificial for a long one.
• Service not included in another category (art. 99, no. 3) — with its own exemption threshold, and losses that can’t be offset.
• Outside the categories of Article 10, hence not taxable — a possible reading, but one that no official source confirms.

These four readings range from 0% to the full marginal rate. We won’t make the call in the tax authorities’ place, and no article announcing a firm rate for perpetuals in Luxembourg can back it up with a text: when significant amounts are at stake, the only way to secure your position is a request for information to the tax office, or an advance decision from the Direct Taxes Administration. If you go through a prop firm, the question arises differently again, since the remuneration generally isn’t a market profit.

The switch to commercial profit

This is the regime’s other border, and it has no numerical threshold. Article 14 defines a commercial enterprise as an “independent activity with a profit motive carried on permanently and constituting participation in general economic life”, and the circular adds that these conditions “are as a rule met in the case of mining a virtual currency, operating an online exchange of virtual currencies or a virtual currency vending machine”.

For a trader, on the other hand, “the delimitation of commercial activity from the management of private wealth must nevertheless be assessed in the light of all the circumstances of the case”. Four indicators are given, and the circular takes care to introduce them with an “among others”: premises or organisation assigned to the transactions, recourse to borrowed capital, frequent turnover of inventory, trading on behalf of third parties. No threshold appears in either the law or the circular — neither number of transactions, nor volume, nor percentage of income — so nobody can tell you at what pace you tip over. What changes once you do tip over, though, is entirely quantifiable.

Point	Private wealth (art. 99bis)	Commercial profit (art. 14)
Six-month rule	Yes: 0% beyond	Disappears: everything is taxable
€500 exemption	Yes	Disappears
Municipal business tax	No	6.75 to 10.50% depending on the municipality
Social contributions	No	Self-employed registration with the CCSS (social security centre)
Deduction of expenses	Income-related expenses only	Electricity, equipment, depreciation

A word on the municipal business tax: its base is 3% of operating profit after an allowance of €40,000 for a sole proprietorship, then multiplied by the municipal rate — which ranges from 225% to 350% for 2026, i.e. an effective tax of 6.75 to 10.50%. The 6.75% quoted everywhere is the national floor, applied by only eight municipalities, including the City of Luxembourg: up to 3.75 points of difference depending on your address.

And the exit? Almost all guides forget it. Article 102, paragraph 5 provides that the value attributed to the asset on withdrawal from the business assets “replaces the acquisition price”, but that “the interval between acquisition and disposal is nonetheless calculated from the actual date of acquisition”: the price resets to the value on that day, but the six-month clock still runs from the original purchase.

Staking, lending, airdrops, NFTs: the grey area

Mining is the only one of these subjects the circular deals with. It treats it as commercial profit in general, with a way out: “where the mining activity doesn’t meet all the criteria for classifying it as a commercial enterprise”, it can generate miscellaneous income within the meaning of Article 99, number 3 — with its own exemption threshold of €500 a year, which can be combined with that of Article 99bis, but “where the expenses incurred to obtain the income exceed the receipts, the resulting deficit can’t be offset”. For everything else, there’s nothing: no law, no circular, no published case law.

Staking: three classifications are defensible — Article 99, number 3 by analogy with non-commercial mining, the soundest textually; the interest on claims of Article 97 if the mechanism is analysed as remuneration of a deposit; commercial profit if the activity is organised as a business. What is certain, however: the resale of the units received falls under Article 99bis, with a new six-month clock running from when they’re made available.

Lending and yield farming: no published position. Article 97, which covers “interest on claims of any kind”, is the broadest classification and would unlock the annual €1,500 exemption on income from movable capital. As for the 20% final withholding, its conditions — a paying agent established in Luxembourg, an account held with a body covered by the General Tax Law or a security publicly issued on a regulated market — are met neither by a DeFi protocol nor by an exchange: it isn’t meant to apply, though we can’t assert that it’s excluded.

Airdrops and NFTs: a token received without consideration prima facie constitutes neither a service nor income from movable capital, which argues for non-taxation at receipt — never confirmed; but if it cost you nothing, your acquisition price is zero, and if it’s resold within six months, the entire sale price is taxable. As for NFTs, the circular covers only “virtual currencies”: placing them among the intangible movable assets of Article 99bis is a logical extrapolation, not a written rule, and the classification of resale royalties isn’t addressed anywhere. If you’ve touched Ordinals, an advance decision remains the only way to be certain.

The cross-border commuter: a non-taxable gain that costs you dearly

A very common situation around the Grand Duchy, and missing from every article: you live in France, Belgium or Germany, you work in Luxembourg, and you request treatment as a resident under Article 157ter.

It’s open to non-residents “taxable in the Grand Duchy on at least 90 per cent of their total income, both domestic and foreign” and to those “whose sum of net income not subject to Luxembourg income tax is less than 13,000 euros”. Its effect: you’re taxed “at the tax rate that would apply to them if they were residents […] and were taxable there on both their domestic and foreign income”.

Read that last sentence closely. A crypto capital gain realised abroad, even if not taxable in Luxembourg, enters the calculation of the rate applied to your Luxembourg salary: it creates no tax of its own, it raises the rate. Worse, the two gateways of Article 157ter are alternatives: meeting either one is enough to keep resident treatment, but a large capital gain shuts both at once — it takes your income not taxable in Luxembourg beyond €13,000 and pushes the share of your income taxable here below 90%. You then lose resident treatment itself, and with it the resident’s deductions — and, if you’re married, class 2, which is open to the non-resident only by this route (art. 157bis, para. 3). It’s the only case in the series where a gain taxed at 0% in one country costs money in that same country.

Arriving, leaving: there is no step-up

Here is the costliest illusion of all. The reasoning seems unassailable: I move to Luxembourg, I sell, I’m at 0%.

Article 102, paragraph 4a does provide for a revaluation of the acquisition price to market value “on the date on which a non-resident individual becomes resident in Luxembourg”. But it reserves it, word for word, for holdings “considered a substantial holding within the meaning of Article 100” and the convertible loans attached to them. There is no step-up for crypto-assets. Someone who settles in the Grand Duchy and resells within six months of a purchase made before their arrival is taxed on the whole capital gain, including the portion accumulated abroad: the move wipes nothing out until the six months have elapsed.

Two safeguards. Taxation is first restricted to the periods concerned — “where the taxpayer is taxable only during part of the year, taxation is restricted to the taxable income of that period” (art. 6, para. 2). And you have to reckon with the State you’re leaving, which has its own exit mechanics: a tax relocation isn’t something to improvise on the strength of a blog article.

In the other direction, Luxembourg is lenient: no general exit tax on individuals’ crypto-assets, and the wealth tax “on resident and non-resident individuals was abolished with effect from 1^st January 2006”. The contrast with Switzerland is instructive: there too private capital gains escape tax, but wealth remains taxed every year at cantonal and municipal level. In Luxembourg, holding costs nothing.

Finally, a non-resident isn’t taxable here on their crypto capital gains: Article 156, number 8 includes among domestic income, for Article 99bis, only capital gains on immovable property situated in the Grand Duchy and on substantial holdings in entities having their seat there. Number 1 of the same article does however include commercial profit made by a permanent establishment in Luxembourg — and it’s in any case the State of residence that taxes first.

Declaring: a practical guide

The return is form 100. The reference points below were taken from the 2025 edition, the most recent published to date: the one for 2026 income will appear in early 2027 and the box numbers will need re-checking.

What you declare	Where	Boxes
Speculative crypto capital gain	Page 11, “Miscellaneous net income”, section B, line “Speculation gain”	1109 to 1112
Mining or services of art. 99, no. 3	Page 11, section C	1117/1118 and 1121/1122
Commercial crypto activity	Page 5, “Commercial profit”, section A	501 and 502
Resident treatment for cross-border commuters	Page 4, “Non-residents” sheet	402
Page NOT to fill in	Page 12, “Extraordinary income”	Neither half-rate, nor quarter rate

Three traps are worth pointing out. Section A of that same page 11 also has a “Speculation gain” line, boxes 1101 to 1104: it covers substantial holdings in collective-type entities, not crypto. Section B refers to a “form 700” titled exactly “capital gains realised on the disposal of immovable property of private wealth”: the detail of your calculation is therefore attached on a separate free-form sheet. Finally, an employee becomes subject to mandatory assessment as soon as their net income not subject to withholding exceeds €600, but that threshold appears in an article that only applies “where taxable income consists in whole or in part of income subject to withholding”. A full-time trader without a salary isn’t covered by it, and we couldn’t verify the implementing regulation that organises their case: the tax office is the place to ask.

The deadline is comfortable: “from tax year 2022, the deadline for filing returns […] is 31 December of the year following the tax year concerned” (ACD), i.e. 31 December 2027 for your 2026 income. If you file late, the office can impose a surcharge “of up to 10% of the tax amount” and issue an ex officio assessment; and if the tax isn’t paid by its due date, late-payment interest runs at the full rate of 0.6% a month, i.e. 7.2% a year.

Good news to finish: unlike France and its dedicated form, Luxembourg requires no declaration of accounts held abroad. That changes nothing about the obligation to declare your worldwide income, nor the documentation required for your self-hosted wallet and your exchange accounts alike.

2026: the first visible year

Luxembourg transposed the DAC 8 directive through the law of 27 March 2026 on the automatic exchange of information reported by crypto-asset service providers. The timetable is set by the tax administration: “the first information is communicated for calendar years starting from 1^st January 2026”, transmitted “no later than 30 June of the year following that to which the information relates”. That is 30 June 2027 for the year 2026.

Two clarifications most articles omit. DAC 8 changes no taxation rule: no tax, no rate, no threshold — it merely makes visible what was less so. And the fines provided for, from €5,000 for a failure to register or a late declaration up to €250,000 for a breach of due diligence procedures, hit the provider, not the user — the tax administration publishes obligations and penalties only for providers. Still, the “they won’t see anything” reasoning now has an expiry date, and it’s summer 2027.

Where Luxembourg stands in the series

Country	Individual’s spot capital gain	The point that surprises
Luxembourg	0% beyond six months; scale below	A loss outside the period can’t be deducted from anything.
France	31.4% from the first euro, beyond €305 of disposals	Crypto-to-crypto exchanges aren’t taxed.
Belgium	10% since 1st January 2026, after a €10,000 allowance	A reference value frozen at 31/12/2025.
Switzerland	Private capital gains not taxable	But a cantonal and municipal wealth tax.
Canada	50% of the gain included in income, then scale	No exemption threshold on small disposals.

The full table is in the five-country comparison. One contrast deserves emphasis: France doesn’t tax exchanges between cryptos but taxes every exit, whatever the duration; Luxembourg taxes every exchange within six months and taxes nothing beyond. The same portfolio, the same year, two completely unrelated results.

What we won’t claim

An honest article also says where its knowledge ends. As of 3 September 2026, no Luxembourg text, no circular and no published case law settles: the classification of a cash-settled derivative held in private wealth; the treatment of staking, lending and protocol yields; that of airdrops at receipt; the application to NFTs of the virtual-currency regime and the nature of resale royalties; the deductibility of a loss through theft, hacking or exchange bankruptcy; the fate of the €500 exemption under joint assessment, €500 for the couple or per person — the text contains no increase clause, unlike other articles, but the form opens two separate boxes; the self-certification obligation falling on the user under DAC 8; the thresholds and penalties for tax fraud; the existence of a VAT circular, a question for the Registration Administration; and the location of an asset held in self-custody for inheritance duty purposes.

Let us add what we will not repeat, for lack of a source: articles announcing a Luxembourg tax reform for 2028, a single tax class or a 2026 economic-situation tax credit aren’t based on any verifiable official text. What is verifiable is that no measure aimed at crypto-assets has been adopted or announced: the only amendment of Article 99bis in 2026, that of the law of 3 February, concerns only carried interest, and nothing suggests that the six-month period or the €500 exemption will be called into question.

Run the numbers with the simulator

The simulator applies the six-month test and the annual exemption to your amounts. It shows the rule applied on each line, and stops at the cases that no text settles rather than inventing an amount. Everything is calculated in your browser: nothing is transmitted or stored.

Frequently asked questions

How much will I pay on my crypto capital gain in Luxembourg?

Nothing at all if you held your units for more than six months: the gain falls into no category of taxable income. Within six months, it’s added to your other income and follows the progressive scale from 0 to 42%, plus 7% or 9% for the employment fund, plus 1.4% dependency contribution — i.e. 47.18% at most, by our calculation.

Is a crypto-to-crypto exchange taxable?

Yes, if it occurs within six months of acquiring the unit disposed of. The exchange is a disposal for consideration followed by an acquisition: going from a stablecoin to bitcoin triggers the tax even if no euro has left the platform. And the unit received starts afresh with a new acquisition price and a new six-month clock.

Can I deduct my losses?

Only those realised within six months, and only against speculation gains of the same year, with any excess offsettable only against real-estate or substantial-holding income. A loss incurred beyond six months can’t be deducted from anything, and no carry-forward to later years is provided.

Does the €50,000 allowance apply to my capital gain?

No, and it’s the costliest mistake. Article 130, paragraph 4 reserves this ten-year allowance for the income of Articles 99ter to 101, and Article 132 reserves the half-rate for the same. The speculation gain of Article 99bis doesn’t appear there: your capital gain is taxed at the full rate of the scale, whatever its amount.

How are my gains on perpetuals taxed?

Nobody knows, and we won’t make it up: the only Luxembourg doctrine on crypto-assets is four pages long and contains no occurrence of the words derivative, perpetual, future, option, leverage, CFD or margin. Four classifications are defensible, ranging from 0% to the full marginal rate. Two certainties remain: a short position is never entitled to the six months, and recourse to borrowed capital is one of the four commerciality indicators.

Can I use FIFO as my exchange does?

No. When individual identification of units is difficult or impossible, the administrative doctrine requires the weighted average price “to the exclusion of the so-called first-in, first-out or last-in, first-out methods”. Most software defaults to FIFO: its report isn’t compliant without prior adjustment.

I’m moving to Luxembourg to sell: does that work?

Not before six months. There is no step-up on arrival for crypto-assets, since the revaluation of the acquisition price is reserved for substantial holdings. If you sell within six months of a purchase made before your arrival, Luxembourg taxes you on the whole capital gain, the portion accumulated abroad included — and you still have to deal with the exit rules of the State you’re leaving.

I’m a cross-border commuter: does my capital gain change anything?

Yes, indirectly, if you request treatment as a resident: you’re then taxed at the rate that would apply to a resident given their domestic and foreign income, so a capital gain not taxable in Luxembourg still raises the rate applied to your salary. It can even make you lose resident treatment: its two conditions are alternatives, so you must fail both, which a large gain does in one stroke — more than €13,000 of income not taxable here, and less than 90% of income taxable here.

Disclaimer

This content is informational and up to date as of 3 September 2026. It isn’t personalised tax advice: we aren’t tax advisers, and everyone’s situation differs according to their tax residence, their tax class, the nature of their transactions and the history of their portfolio. The cited texts may be amended, and no official Luxembourg source settles several points that are essential for an active trader — derivatives, staking, lending, NFTs. Before any decision involving significant amounts, send a request for information to your tax office, or consult a tax lawyer or a chartered accountant.