The rule as written
Coins earned through staking — where the contribution consists essentially of committing existing cryptocurrency — trigger no tax at receipt. The same applies to airdrops, bounties and coins from hardforks. The price: those coins carry a cost basis of zero euros. On a later sale into euros, the entire proceeds are gain, taxed at 27.5%. The tax does not disappear — it waits, in full, for realisation.
The contrast inside the same statute: mining and lending are current income — the receipt value is taxed immediately at 27.5% and simultaneously becomes the cost basis. Two kinds of yield, two mechanics, one section. Treat them alike and you either book tax that never fell due, or cost basis that never existed.
Germany taxes staking at receipt; so do the US and the UK. Austria does not. Learn your rules from international blogs and you import the wrong jurisdiction.
Why half the internet gets it backwards
International tax guides translate their home rule along with the language; even Austrian sites occasionally write "staking is taxed at 27.5% on receipt" — presumably because that is true almost everywhere else. The consequences cut both ways. Taxing receipts that were tax-free means paying too early and too much. The second confusion is more dangerous: booking the receipt value as cost basis into the moving average understates gain on every later sale — with costs that legally never existed. That surfaces precisely when data gets cross-checked, and from 2027 it gets cross-checked.
The bookkeeping consequence nobody mentions
Zero-cost coins land in the same wallet as purchased coins — and the moving average blends them. Every staking receipt pulls the wallet's average down; the taxable gain of every future sale rises accordingly, proportionally, silently. That is correct and intended, but it means: a wallet carrying years of staking rewards has an average cost no exchange statement will ever show you. Only your own complete record — every reward, date, quantity — carries the computation.
What to do
- Log every reward without taxing it. Date and quantity suffice for the zero-cost entry; the euro value at receipt is irrelevant for staking — and half the job for mining and lending.
- Separate the yield types cleanly. Staking, airdrop, bounty, hardfork: zero cost, tax later. Mining, lending: tax the receipt, value becomes basis. Liquidity and DeFi constructs in between: case by case, with advice.
- Price the zero into your exit plan. A sale from a reward-heavy wallet realises more gain than the chart suggests. Before larger euro exits, compute the actual average — do not estimate it.
- Audit past years for the imported rule. Anyone who declared staking on a foreign pattern — in either direction — has a correction topic. The Selbstanzeige page describes the route while it is still cheap.
This page explains a receipt rule. It is not advice on your rewards, and reading it creates no professional relationship.