our article on crypto in box 3<\/a>.<\/p>\nFor investments and other assets, the category crypto falls under, that percentage is 6.00 percent in 2026 (5.88 percent in 2025). On the benefit calculated this way you then pay 36 percent tax, in both 2025 and 2026.<\/p>\n
The reference date is strict: 1 January at 00:00, at the price on the trading platform you use. Whatever happens to the price after that does not matter for that tax year.<\/p>\n
Not everything is taxed. There is a tax-free allowance: \u20ac59,357 per person in 2026 (\u20ac57,684 in 2025); tax partners together count up to double that. If your box 3 wealth stays below that threshold, in principle no box 3 tax is due on it.<\/p>\n
The sting is in the mechanism: you settle up on an assumed return, even in a year without any gain. In a strongly rising crypto year that works in your favour; in a losing year it does not.<\/p>\n
The deemed return is no longer set in stone<\/h2>\n
Since 19 July 2025 the Box 3 Counter-Evidence Act (Wet tegenbewijsregeling box 3) has been in force. This counter-evidence scheme lets you prove that you earned less than the deemed return, so that you pay less. Show that, and you get back the tax you overpaid. If your actual return was higher, you do not have to pay anything extra. In effect, tax is thus levied on the lower of the two returns. The scheme applies retroactively to 2017 under conditions (mainly for those who objected at the time or whose assessment was not yet final) and, from the return for 2025 onward, sits within the regular income-tax return.<\/p>\n
The deemed return is, moreover, a temporary system. The government intends to switch to a charge on actual return from 1 January 2028. The House of Representatives has passed the bill; the Senate has yet to consider it. The date is therefore not yet certain, but the direction is clear: the box 3 charge on privately held crypto will be overhauled in the coming years.<\/p>\n
Through a bv: corporate income tax plus box 2<\/h2>\n
Choose the bv route, and the field changes. A bv (a Dutch private limited company) pays corporate income tax (vennootschapsbelasting, or Vpb): the profit tax a company pays, levied on the profit actually made rather than on an assumed percentage. The rate is 19 percent up to and including \u20ac200,000 of profit and 25.8 percent above that, in both 2025 and 2026. That keeps the first charge modest for as long as the profit stays inside the company.<\/p>\n
The second charge follows only when profit is distributed to you privately. If you take the profit out of the bv as a dividend (profit a company pays out to its shareholder) or as substantial-interest income, you pay a further 24.5 percent in box 2 up to \u20ac68,843 and 31 percent above that (the 2026 threshold; \u20ac67,804 in 2025). Box 2 is the tax you pay when you take profit out of your own company; a substantial interest here is a stake of 5 percent or more in that company. That threshold, too, applies per person, so tax partners together use double the amount at 24.5 percent. If the profit is ultimately distributed in full as dividend, the combined effective tax burden, at current rates, comes to roughly 38.8 percent in the lowest brackets and 48.8 percent in the highest. The actual burden may differ depending on the circumstances. Next to box 3 that looks steep.<\/p>\n
Yet the strength of the bv lies in the deferral: as long as you distribute nothing, box 2 stays out of the picture and you pay only corporate income tax. The return you are not handing over to box 2 keeps working inside the company.<\/p>\n
When each route tends to work out better<\/h2>\n
There is no ready-made answer, but a few lines emerge. If you expect a return that is structurally above the deemed return, box 3 taxes you relatively lightly: you settle up on 6.00 percent regardless of how much more you actually make (2026 figure). If your return stays below that percentage, or you make a loss, box 3 weighs heavily, though the counter-evidence scheme absorbs part of that.<\/p>\n
The bv becomes more attractive as the amount grows larger and the longer you leave the profit untouched. The box 2 deferral then acts as an interest-free lever: the full return keeps compounding, year after year. Distribute everything in the short term, on the other hand, and that deferral benefit falls away, leaving only the higher combined burden. For smaller amounts the bv route often does not outweigh the costs and the hassle; more on that below.<\/p>\n
In practice: administration, costs and business rationale<\/h2>\n
Tax is only one side of the trade-off. A bv brings fixed costs with it: annual accounts, a corporate income-tax return, bookkeeping and usually an accountant or tax adviser. For a modest crypto position those costs quickly add up. The business rationale needs attention too: investing from a bv has to fit within what the company may do and actually does, and the record-keeping of transactions, wallets and valuations is exacting.<\/p>\n
A separate point is valuation. When an unrealised gain (a paper gain: your crypto is worth more, but you have not sold) falls into the taxable profit inside the bv depends on the valuation method you choose under sound business practice (goed koopmansgebruik): the accounting rules that determine when a company books profit or loss. That is exactly the kind of point to go through with your adviser beforehand, because it bears directly on how large the deferral benefit really is in your case.<\/p>\n
The choice depends on your own picture<\/h2>\n
The choice between crypto in the bv or privately depends on your wealth, your investment horizon and your broader tax situation; so do not decide in isolation from that picture. The rates and amounts in this article apply to the 2025 and 2026 tax years; the intended new box 3 system from 2028 could shift the balance again in time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You have just exited: the shares in your company are sold, and there is now a sum sitting in your account waiting for a purpose. You want to put part of it into crypto. Almost at once the question comes up: do you do that privately, in box 3, or through your bv? The answer…","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2274,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"callisto_views":3,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crypto-tax"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/callistocapital.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/callistocapital.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/callistocapital.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/callistocapital.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/callistocapital.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1913"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/callistocapital.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2290,"href":"https:\/\/callistocapital.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1913\/revisions\/2290"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/callistocapital.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/callistocapital.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/callistocapital.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/callistocapital.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}