How to pay tax on cryptocurrency in Portugal
A guide for Portuguese tax residents who sell cryptocurrency through an exchange, P2P or an exchange office, withdraw euros to a Portuguese bank or earn income from staking and mining. You will find out which transactions are taxed, how to prepare your trading history and what to show the bank or the Autoridade Tributária e Aduaneira (the tax office).
Establish your tax residence and the nature of your transactions
A Portuguese tax resident usually declares income from all over the world — not only money that arrives in a Portuguese account. Withdrawing to another country or spending with a crypto card does not in itself cancel the tax. Special regimes, including the old NHR, do not automatically exempt all cryptocurrency.
Occasional sales of personal savings usually fall into category G — capital gains. Regular trading as an organised activity, mining, and issuing and validating crypto assets may fall into category B — business income. What matters here is regularity, volume, how the work is organised and where the money came from, so it is best to show a borderline case to a contabilista certificado (a certified accountant).
The rules below apply to ordinary interchangeable crypto assets. For NFTs, tokenised securities and some DeFi products the classification may be different.
Save your history before you sell or the exchange closes
Download a CSV or PDF from Binance, Bybit, Kraken and other platforms with your purchases, sales, swaps, fees, deposits and withdrawals. Separately save bank statements, P2P orders, exchange office receipts, wallet addresses and transaction txids. It is best to download them every year: once an account is closed, it may be impossible to recover the purchase price and date.
The calculation uses FIFO: the coins bought first are treated as the first ones sold. Under the rules in force in 2026, FIFO records may be kept separately for each custodian or service provider. A transfer between your own wallets is not a sale, but you need to prove that both addresses or accounts belonged to you.
If your history is lost, do not put in an approximate price without explanation. Rebuild the chain from bank statements, emails from the exchange and the blockchain. If you cannot prove the acquisition cost, the tax office may not accept the expenses you claim, and your taxable gain will be higher.
Choose how to sell and do not confuse it with the tax calculation
In practice, cryptocurrency is held on centralised exchanges — Binance, Bybit, Kraken, OKX and others — on hardware wallets or in DeFi. People sell for euros on an exchange and send a SEPA transfer to their own IBAN, use P2P or get cash at an exchange office. How you withdraw does not determine the tax: what matters is the disposal itself and the value received.
The most transparent route for the bank is selling on a verified exchange and transferring the euros from the exchange account to a bank account in the same name. With P2P, money comes from random private individuals, so it is harder to explain where it came from and to link a transfer to a particular sale. At an exchange office, ask for a receipt or contract showing the amount, rate, fee and the details of both parties.
Do not move funds through several exchanges just to hide where they came from. Such a chain makes proof harder and can trigger an AML check. In the experience described, a transfer through another exchange helped get round a fintech's technical limit, but that does not make the route safe as far as the bank or the tax office is concerned.
Separate taxable transactions from transfers between wallets
Under the Portuguese rules in force in 2026, selling a crypto asset for euros, dollars, goods or services is a disposal. For assets held for less than 365 days, a positive annual result in category G is usually taxed at a flat rate of 28%. You can choose englobamento (adding it to your total income), in which case progressive rates apply; this may not suit everyone.
Swapping one cryptocurrency for another does not usually lead to immediate tax: the original cost is carried forward until the asset is later disposed of for money, goods or a service. A transfer between your own wallets is not a sale either. However, fees and intermediate swaps must be kept in your history.
Gains on ordinary crypto assets held for at least 365 days are generally not taxed. Such sales must still be shown in your return as exempt. The exemption has limits linked, in particular, to the jurisdiction of the parties and of the service provider; if you use a platform from a state without a suitable exchange of tax information, check the rule separately.
Deal separately with P2P, staking and professional activity
With P2P, selling USDT or another coin for euros is still a sale of a crypto asset. Keep the order, the rate, the messages on the platform, the counterparty's name and the bank transfer. To a bank, payments from lots of strangers look like commercial turnover or transit transactions, even if each amount is small.
Staking rewards count as income connected with crypto assets. If the reward is paid directly in cryptocurrency, Portuguese rules may defer the tax until it is later disposed of. But liquid staking, DeFi, lending and rewards in other tokens work differently, so keep the date, quantity, market value and a description of each reward.
Mining and validation usually fall into category B. Under the simplified regime in 2026 there is a coefficient of 0.15 for ordinary crypto asset transactions and 0.95 for mining; the resulting tax base is then taxed at progressive rates. Segurança Social (social security contributions) may also apply. You must not open an atividade independente (self-employed activity) and issue recibos verdes (electronic receipts) for services that do not exist in order to legalise cryptocurrency: the documents must reflect real activity.
Get ready for your Portuguese bank's compliance checks
Before a large withdrawal you can warn your bank manager and ask which documents to upload. The bank is usually interested in source of funds (where a particular transfer came from) and source of wealth (how your capital was built up overall). Prepare the exchange statement for the sale, the history of the original purchase, the SEPA confirmation, tax returns, employment contracts or documents on the sale of property whose proceeds were used to buy the cryptocurrency.
The bank may let the transfer through without questions, ask for documents later, stop the transaction, restrict the account or send the money back. In one case Millennium bcp (a bank) for years did not ask where ordinary funds came from, but demanded an explanation of the purpose of a large transfer to a third country; after the manager spoke to compliance, the transaction was approved. In another case Revolut closed access several years after a transaction of about 40 USDT. This shows that there is no safe threshold.
With P2P it is especially hard to explain why the money came from a stranger rather than an exchange. Do not split withdrawals artificially and do not give the bank a false payment reference: repeated small transfers are analysed too.
Calculate the gain on every coin you sell
For each taxable sale, work out the proceeds in euros minus the proven acquisition cost and the necessary costs of buying and selling. Apply FIFO, add up the results for the calendar year and separate assets held for less than 365 days from those held longer.
If short-term transactions give a positive balance in category G, the standard flat rate in 2026 is 28%. If you choose englobamento (adding it to your total income), the result is added to your other income and taxed on the progressive scale. If you make that choice and the conditions are met, a negative balance can be carried forward for the next five years.
Do not treat the whole bank withdrawal as profit: part of the amount may be the return of the money you originally invested. But you will have to prove every element of the cost with documents.
File your annual return
The Modelo 3 de IRS (the annual income tax return) is filed through the Portal das Finanças (the tax portal) from 1 April to 30 June of the year after the sale. For example, transactions in 2026 are declared from 1 April to 30 June 2027.
Taxable category G sales of crypto assets go in Anexo G (the capital gains annex), and those exempt after being held for at least 365 days in Anexo G1 (the annex on non-taxable transactions). Business activity is shown in Anexo B or Anexo C, and foreign income and accounts, if needed, in Anexo J. The table numbers in the annexes can change, so use the form for the right year.
If you have already filed a return without the cryptocurrency, you can submit a declaração de substituição (a corrected return). The sooner the mistake is corrected, the lower the risk of interest and a fine.
Answer a request from the tax office with documents, not a general story
The Autoridade Tributária e Aduaneira (the tax office) may send a notificação (notice) to the Portal das Finanças (the tax portal), through ViaCTT (the electronic mailbox) or by ordinary post. The request may ask you to explain payments into your bank account, confirm the purchase date and cost, and show your exchange history, wallet addresses, P2P orders and FIFO calculation.
Put your answer together as a table: purchase date, quantity, cost and fee; later transfers between your own addresses; date and method of sale; amount in euros; a reference to the supporting document. Attach the exchange's CSV and PDF, bank statements and txids. If the account is closed, say so plainly and attach everything you used to rebuild the history.
Keep to the deadline in the notice. If there is a lot of material or access to the exchange is being restored, ask for an extension before the deadline via e-balcão (online requests) or from the inspector named. The accounts we have contain no confirmed cases of a tax audit of cryptocurrency specifically in Portugal, so no particular outcome can be promised.
What to bring
- NIF (Portuguese tax number) and access to the Portal das Finanças (the tax portal)
- CSV and PDF with your full exchange trading history
- Proof of the original cryptocurrency purchases
- Bank statements for money paid in and withdrawn
- P2P orders with the counterparty's name and the transfer details
- Receipts or contracts from exchange offices
- Addresses of your wallets and txids of transfers
- FIFO calculation for each service provider
- Reports on staking, mining and DeFi rewards
- Previous Modelo 3 de IRS (annual returns), if they confirm the source of your capital
- Documents on the source of the original money: salary, sale of property, inheritance or other income
Where people most often trip up
- Thinking tax only arises once euros arrive in a Portuguese bank
- Losing the purchase history after an exchange closes or blocks the account
- Being unable to prove that a transfer between wallets was a transfer to yourself
- Mixing up personal savings, regular trading, staking and mining
- Not keeping the P2P order, so the bank transfer looks like money from a stranger
- Taking the exemption after 365 days to mean you do not have to declare at all
- Not checking the exchange's jurisdiction before applying the exemption after 365 days
- Treating the whole withdrawal from the exchange as profit instead of proceeds minus cost
- Trying to hide where the money came from with a chain of exchanges, wallets and fintechs
- Using fake recibos verdes (electronic receipts) instead of declaring the real transaction
- Ignoring notices on the Portal das Finanças (the tax portal) and in ViaCTT (the electronic mailbox)
How it went for people
Six months of exchange compliance ended with a blocked card
For six months a crypto exchange's compliance team asked a user for one document after another. First proof of address and residence, then the taxes paid in Portugal; he explained that he had only become resident in 2024 and his return would not appear until April 2025. Then they asked him to prove an income of at least €45,000 a year, and after that for a year's statement from his main bank. He objected that this was all his transactions for the year and the exchange was not a public authority; they settled on a three-month statement. Three weeks later a letter arrived: the exchange card had been blocked following the compliance review, the decision was final and would not be explained.
Retold in our own words from messages in open chats. The link leads to the full original message.