Gifting Bitcoin to Your Spouse: Allowance, Holding Period and the Report to the Tax Office

If you gift Bitcoin to your spouse, almost nothing happens for tax purposes, and that is exactly the point. The gift itself as a rule triggers no gift tax, because spouses have an allowance of 500,000 euros. Nor does it trigger income tax, because a transfer without consideration is not a disposal. What passes over is more than the coins: your acquisition date and your purchase price travel with them. This article explains which two types of tax can arise at all on a gift to a spouse, which deadlines run, where the practical advantage lies and which records you have to keep so that the tax office recognises the transfer. One point up front: this is about German law, that is the Inheritance and Gift Tax Act (ErbStG) and section 23 of the Income Tax Act. Anyone resident in Austria or Switzerland works with different rules and different allowances. Gifting Bitcoin to your spouse: what actually passes over for tax purposes A gift of crypto-assets touches two entirely separate types of tax, and this is the most common confusion of all. The first is gift tax, and its question is: is the transfer of assets as such taxable? What matters for that is the value of the coins on the day of the ...