The rate: 31.4% — and why it moved
The flat levy on digital-asset gains stands at 31.4% since 1 January 2026: 12.8% income tax plus 18.6% social levies, after the CSG on capital income rose from 9.2 to 10.6%. Gains realised through 31 December 2025 — declared in spring 2026 — stayed at 30%. The lesson outweighs the number: the "flat" rate moves with each finance act, and we keep this line on watch. The progressive-scale option, open since 2023, replaces the 12.8% income-tax leg — worth computing in the 0 and 11% brackets, rarely above.
The formula: a fraction of capital, not a lot
The taxable gain on a disposal is: disposal price − (total acquisition cost of the portfolio × disposal price ÷ global portfolio value on the day of disposal). In plain terms: sell 10% of your portfolio's value and you "consume" 10% of all the capital you ever put in — every coin, every platform, every wallet combined. There is no FIFO and no lot-picking: the portfolio is one whole, and every taxable disposal requires knowing its total value that day.
Germany tracks every coin to the day; France tracks a single number — but demands it for everything you own, at every sale. Two irreconcilable ledgers: a foreign FIFO tax report does not convert, it recomputes.
The three numbers that frame it
€305: if your total taxable disposals for the year stay under this, the exemption is complete — but it reads amounts sold, not gains: selling €1,000 with a €50 gain makes those €50 taxable. One year: losses offset digital-asset gains of the same year, and the excess dies — no carryforward. Realising a loss in December with no gain to absorb it is realising it for no one. Ten years: the administration's assessment window when foreign holdings went undeclared — line 11 weighs on this one.
What stays open
How staking rewards and airdrops are classified on receipt is not uniformly settled — non-commercial business income for some, investment income or zero-cost portfolio entry for others. We mark the line "?": the position is chosen with advice and documented, not improvised in a form box. And activity run in professional conditions — tooling, complexity, leverage — falls into business income since 2023: the boundary follows the conditions of trading, not the order count.
What to do
- Keep the full acquisition history — from the beginning. The formula needs the portfolio's total acquisition cost: every buy, every platform, every year still counts.
- Photograph the portfolio at every taxable disposal. Global value on the day of sale, one stable price source — the variable no one reconstructs from memory.
- Synchronise losses and gains within the year. With no carryforward, a loss only counts if a same-year gain absorbs it.
- Compute the progressive option before ticking it. It binds the year; in low brackets it wins, elsewhere it costs.
This page explains computational rules. It is not advice on your operations, and reading it creates no professional relationship.