From Wallet to Personal Income Tax (IRPF): A Guide to Operating Without Pitfalls

Business Expats
Sep 20
3 min read

Individual crypto investing doesn’t need to be a labyrinth.

The Spanish Tax Agency (Agencia Tributaria) has been steadily reinforcing a clear and stable framework for individuals operating outside of a business activity. If you know what is taxable, when it is taxable, and where it fits into the return, the rest is procedure and traceability. At Business Expats, we hold on to a guiding principle: good documentation is just as important as choosing the right box on the tax return.

Starting with the basics

Selling crypto for euros or exchanging crypto for crypto generates a capital gain or loss to be included in the savings tax base. It is calculated as the difference between the acquisition cost and the value at the time of disposal or exchange. For homogeneous units, the FIFO method applies (the earliest units acquired are deemed to be sold first).Transaction costs directly linked to acquisition, disposal, or exchange — trading fees and gas fees — adjust either the acquisition cost or the transfer value. By contrast, transferring funds between your own wallets is not a taxable event: without a sale or exchange, there is no taxable income.

Periodic income

Another key category is periodic returns: staking, lending, or DeFi strategies that pay a “daily %.” For tax purposes, these are treated as investment income (rendimientos del capital mobiliario) and also fall under the savings base.

Regardless of whether you are paid in crypto, you must value the income in euros on the date of receipt and record that amount.

A common oversight: the so-called “minting fee” that some validators deduct does not reduce taxable income at the time of receipt. Instead, it increases the acquisition cost of the tokens received, becoming relevant later upon disposal.

Airdrops

What about airdrops? If received “for free,” without work or business activity behind them, the Tax Agency treats them as an increase in wealth, included in the general tax base (not in the savings base), at their market value in euros on the date of receipt. This approach is consistent with the idea that your net worth increases at that moment, regardless of whether you decide to sell.

Operational grey areas

Withdrawal fees are only fiscally relevant if they form part of a disposal or exchange. Moving assets between providers, by itself, is irrelevant.
For bridges between blockchains, context is key: if you can demonstrate they are an indispensable part of a specific sale/exchange transaction, you may defend their classification as inherent expenses. Otherwise, the prudent approach is not to deduct them.

A practical method to avoid pitfalls

Applying all this smoothly requires a simple method:

Classify each transaction: sale/exchange, periodic return, or airdrop.
Record date and euro value of the taxable event (sale/exchange or income receipt), even if no fiat conversion occurs.
Apply FIFO to partial disposals of the same crypto and allocate fees correctly to cost or transfer value.
Gather evidence: tx-hash, exchange exports, exchange rate snapshot, and fee receipts.

With this package, your transaction history is audit-ready and your tax return clean.

Examples

If you bought 1 ETH for €1,600 and later exchange it for USDT when it is worth €2,000, you realize a €400 gain in the savings base. If you paid €20 in gas to execute the swap, the transfer value is adjusted, and the net gain is €380.
If you receive 100 USDT in staking rewards today, you declare €100 of investment income (savings base) today. If the validator deducts 2 USDT as a “minting fee,” those €2 increase the acquisition cost of the 100 USDT for their future disposal.
If you receive an airdrop of 50 tokens valued at €1 each on the day of receipt, you integrate €50 into the general base at that moment.

Business Expats’ approach

At Business Expats, our focus is to convert this theory into a replicable procedure.

In a one-month onboarding process, we put your case in order: classifying income into savings vs. general base, providing record templates with EUR valuation by date, applying FIFO rules to your transaction history, and preparing a checklist of evidence that stands up to scrutiny.

If you want continued support, we activate the ongoing plan that best matches your investment rhythm.

Live conference: Cripto taxation in Spain 2025

If you’d like to see this live and with real case studies, join us in Madrid on October 10th. We will break these criteria down into practical steps, build a traceability spreadsheet together, and address questions on staking, airdrops, bridges, and crypto-to-crypto swaps.