0 euros in acquisition costs in the crypto tax draft: how to check salary paid in Bitcoin

Anyone who receives their salary in Bitcoin already pays tax on it today: the inflow is employment income and is taxed like a salary paid in euros. The German finance ministry's draft bill on crypto taxation could mean that the same amount enters the calculation a second time on a later sale, because acquisition costs would then have to be set at zero euros. What would be taxable is the entire sale proceeds, not the price gain alone.

This gap is documented, but it remains an interpretation: the point comes from a named tax adviser and relates to a draft that still has to pass the cabinet, the Bundestag and the Bundesrat. What you can do about it today, if it affects you, is above all to document. For every inflow you need the euro amount at the moment it arrives together with a chain of evidence, because that record is precisely what will later argue for an acquisition value above zero.

Acquisition costs of zero euros: what the draft bill provides for

The draft moves the taxation of cryptocurrencies out of private disposals and into income from capital, that is from Section 23 to Section 20 of the German Income Tax Act. With that change of regime comes a rule that sounds technical at fir...