February 22, 2026
10 mins
Denmark has one of the most detailed and demanding tax systems in Europe, both for individuals and businesses. The Danish Tax Agency (Skattestyrelsen) provides extensive guidance and online tools to help taxpayers declare their income properly, including income or profits from cryptocurrency.
From the government’s perspective, crypto is a speculative asset. This means that almost every use of it, whether selling, trading, gifting, or spending, is treated as a taxable event, with very few exceptions.
In the guide below, you’ll learn how crypto tax rates work in Denmark, what activities are taxable, how to report your crypto to the Danish Tax Agency, and what to expect as a resident or foreign investor operating in one of the EU’s most tightly regulated frameworks.
In Denmark, you need to pay taxes on your crypto.
The government office in charge of this is the Danish Tax Agency (Skattestyrelsen), which classifies cryptocurrency as a speculative asset rather than money or a security.
This classification means that the government assumes you bought crypto with the intention of reselling it for profit, rather than using it as a regular currency. From this perspective, every action that involves using, exchanging, or selling your crypto is considered a taxable event.
You must pay tax when you sell, trade, or spend your crypto and make a gain. Even swapping one cryptocurrency for another, for example, exchanging Bitcoin (BTC) for Ethereum (ETH), counts as a taxable event because the first coin is treated as if it were sold.
Denmark defines cryptocurrency as a digital representation of value that can be traded electronically, but is not recognized as legal tender.
This means you can pay someone using crypto, but that person is not legally required to accept it as payment for a debt, similar to how the UK classifies crypto assets.
Once you realize a profit by selling, trading, or using crypto for payment (even for goods or services), you must declare it as either personal income or capital gains, depending on how you operate.
You report your crypto holdings and transactions through TastSelv, Skattestyrelsen’s online tax portal, under the “Shares and Securities” section. When reporting, you’ll need to include:
If you prefer automation, platforms like Koinly and CoinTracker integrate directly with Danish tax forms and automatically convert each transaction into DKK at the correct historical rate.
If your crypto activity is run as a business, such as mining, trading professionally, or accepting crypto as payment, those earnings are treated as corporate income.
In that case, the applicable corporate tax rate is 22% on net profits.
How Denmark Distinguishes Individuals from Businesses
The Danish tax system distinguishes individuals from businesses based on frequency, purpose, and organization.
The Tax Agency ultimately decides whether your trading activity qualifies as business activity or remains a personal investment.
To be crypto-friendly doesn’t just mean allowing people to buy or sell crypto; it means encouraging its use and integration into everyday financial systems.
By that definition, Denmark is not particularly crypto-friendly. Its taxation framework is precise, transparent, and fair, but it’s also strict and highly regulated. You can use crypto freely, but you won’t find tax breaks, incentives, or government programs that promote its adoption.
Crypto is legal to buy, sell, and hold, and Danish banks and payment processors generally allow digital-asset transactions. However, the regulatory environment focuses more on control and reporting than on innovation or flexibility.
Denmark participates in two major international initiatives that shape its crypto policy:
The EU’s DAC8 Directive (2023–2026): This regulation requires all EU-based crypto-asset service providers to report user transactions to their national tax authorities. These records are then automatically shared among all EU member states to improve cross-border tax transparency.
The OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF): This global standard complements DAC8, ensuring that crypto holdings and transactions are automatically reported across countries under a unified structure.
Together, these frameworks make Denmark a high-compliance jurisdiction. They ensure fairness and transparency, but for everyday crypto users, they also mean your transaction data is more visible and traceable than ever.
So while Denmark offers clarity and legal certainty, it doesn’t provide leniency. For investors who value structure and transparency, it’s a stable environment. But for those seeking a low-tax, privacy, or lightly regulated haven, Denmark is unlikely to feel “crypto-friendly.”
Everyone who is tax-liable in Denmark must also pay tax on their crypto. The rule is simple: if you pay tax on your income, you also pay it on your crypto.
Remember that Denmark treats crypto as a speculative asset, which means almost every use of it is a taxable event. The only exceptions are when you hold your crypto without selling or when you transfer it between your own wallets, since ownership doesn’t change.
Any other use, selling, trading, gifting, paying for services, or receiving it as payment, is considered a taxable event and must be reported.
For travelers, non-residents, or foreign nationals, taxation depends on the source of income.
If you are not a Danish resident, you only pay tax on Danish-source income.
For example, if you are a U.S. citizen running a crypto business in Copenhagen or receiving crypto payments from Danish clients, that income is taxable in Denmark.
If you move to Denmark, the Danish Tax Agency (Skattestyrelsen) may treat your entire crypto portfolio as disposed of at market value on the day you become tax-resident, effectively taxing any unrealized gains at that point. Be cautious, as this rule ensures that assets acquired before residency are properly declared.
If you earn crypto through mining, staking, airdrops, or salary payments, those earnings are considered personal income at their market value in DKK on the day you receive them.
Later, when you sell or trade those assets, any profit or loss becomes a capital gain or loss, which must also be reported.
You might wonder if there’s any way to reduce your taxes.
In Denmark, the answer depends on whether your activity shows a clear intent to profit.
This distinction matters because losses are only deductible if your trading is demonstrably profit-oriented.
The Tax Agency decides this by reviewing:
If you trade casually as a hobby, you still pay tax on gains, but you cannot deduct losses.
If your trading shows a profit motive, you can deduct losses, but you also risk being classified as a business, which means you must pay corporate taxes instead of personal income tax.
Ultimately, the Danish Tax Agency has the final word on where that line is drawn.
As we mentioned before, Denmark doesn’t have a special tax rate for crypto. Instead, your crypto profits are simply added to your total income and taxed under the same system as your personal or business earnings.
If you’re an individual, your crypto gains fall under income tax or capital gains tax, depending on how you use or earn them.
If you’re a business, your profits are taxed at the standard corporate tax rate of 22%.
What makes Denmark unique is that almost every crypto activity is a taxable event; selling, trading, gifting, or spending crypto is all taxable because of its classification as a speculative asset. The only exceptions are holding your crypto or transferring it between your own wallets.
Denmark uses a progressive income tax structure that combines state, municipal, and church taxes.
That means there’s no fixed “crypto tax rate.” Instead, the amount you pay depends on your overall taxable income and where you live.
As of 2025, the brackets are roughly:
Always check the latest tax brackets directly on the Danish Tax Agency’s official page.
These percentages are updated every year, so it’s important to verify them before you file.
When you pay taxes as an individual in Denmark, your total income is divided into brackets, which determine how much tax you owe. These brackets help define the bottom bracket tax and the top bracket tax.
The bottom bracket tax applies to most taxpayers, while the top bracket tax is only charged on higher income levels that exceed a specific threshold.
According to the Danish Tax Agency (Skattestyrelsen), bottom bracket tax is payable by anyone with an income.
It is calculated on what’s known as your personal income, including any positive net income from capital.
However, you only pay bottom bracket tax on the part of your income that exceeds your personal allowance, meaning a portion of your income is tax-free.
For 2025, the personal allowance (tax-free amount) is:
The Tax Agency automatically includes your personal allowance when calculating your tax, so you don’t need to declare it separately.
The top bracket tax applies only to the portion of your income that exceeds a basic threshold. As of 2025, the top bracket tax rate is 15%, which is added on top of your other applicable taxes.
In other words, the top bracket tax is levied on the part of your personal income that goes beyond a certain level. Once you pass that threshold, you pay an extra 15% on that portion of your income, including crypto profits if they push you into that bracket.
Denmark also has a tax ceiling, which represents the maximum combined tax rate that can be applied to your income.
This ceiling ensures that the total amount you pay to the state and local administrations does not exceed the maximum allowed rate. However, this ceiling does not include church tax or labor market contributions, which are calculated separately.
Additionally, net income from capital (such as investment or crypto-related gains) is subject to its own maximum rate of 42%.
Altogether, Denmark’s tax structure is highly organized and transparent, but also detailed and demanding. Each element, from the personal allowance to the tax ceiling, ensures fairness and consistency across income levels while keeping every taxpayer fully accountable.
Local municipal and church taxes vary depending on your city or region, and they’re part of the total 37–52% effective tax range.
You cannot pay your taxes in crypto; all tax payments must be made in Danish kroner (DKK).
That’s because Denmark views crypto as a speculative asset, not a legal tender. You’re free to use it as payment, but no one is legally required to accept it as such.
Additionally, whenever you use crypto to buy goods or services, that transaction is treated as a disposal event for tax purposes.
For example:
If you buy a laptop with Bitcoin or pay for web services using Ethereum, that payment is treated as if you sold your crypto at its current market price. You must then declare any profit (or loss) from that sale as part of your capital gains.
The crypto tax deadlines in Denmark follow the same schedule as regular income taxes.
The taxable year runs from January 1 to December 31, and all crypto income or capital gains must be reported for that same period.
Individual taxpayers must usually file their tax return by July 1 of the following year, while businesses may have up to six months after the end of their financial year.
It’s important to declare your crypto income within that timeframe, as late or inaccurate reporting can result in penalties under Danish tax law.
To calculate your crypto tax correctly, you must first keep complete records of all your transactions.
That includes every purchase, sale, swap, and transfer, whether they occurred on centralized exchanges, decentralized platforms, or personal wallets. You should also record:
To simplify reporting, you can use tools such as Koinly, CoinTracker, or Accointing, which automatically track transactions and integrate with the Danish Tax Agency’s TastSelv system. These platforms convert every trade into DKK, calculate your capital gains or losses, and prepare export-ready reports for submission.
There are no tax-free transactions in the traditional sense, but a few situations are exempt because no ownership change occurs.
You don’t pay tax when you:
However, any disposal of crypto, selling, trading, paying for services, or gifting, triggers taxation.
When gifting crypto, the transfer is considered a disposal for the giver, meaning you may owe tax if the value has increased.
For 2025, the tax-free gift limits are:
If a crypto gift exceeds these limits, the amount above the threshold is taxable.
The recipient of the gift must also report the crypto’s fair market value at the time they received it. Later, if they sell it, that value becomes their cost basis for calculating capital gains.
In short: holding or moving your own crypto is tax-free, but spending, selling, or gifting it beyond allowed limits is not.
Yes. The Danish Tax Agency (Skattestyrelsen) can track crypto activity through both national and international data-sharing systems.
Denmark is part of the European Union’s DAC8 Directive, which requires all EU-based crypto-asset service providers, including exchanges, wallet platforms, and brokers, to report user transactions to their national tax authorities. These reports are then shared automatically across all EU member states.
In addition, Denmark participates in the OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF), a global standard that ensures crypto holdings and transactions are automatically reported between countries under a unified system.
In practice, this means that your crypto trades, transfers, and income can be traced through the exchanges and institutions you use, even if your funds move across borders.
So yes, the Danish Tax Agency does have access to this information. While privacy-oriented tools may obscure individual wallet addresses, any time cryptocurrency touches a regulated platform or a Danish bank account, a record is created. That record can be used to verify your tax declarations.
Denmark’s crypto tax system is strong, detailed, and demanding. For crypto investors, it is not a crypto-friendly country, not because it bans crypto, but because it doesn’t incentivize its use. The system prioritizes traceability, accountability, and taxation over adoption, making it easier to comply than to experiment.
As crypto regulations continue to evolve under the EU’s DAC8 directive and the OECD’s CARF framework, crypto income in Denmark will remain heavily monitored, traceable, and taxable.
As an investor or active crypto user, you should regularly review official updates from Skattestyrelsen to stay compliant and avoid penalties.
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