{"id":1915,"date":"2026-08-19T14:46:07","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T14:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/callistocapital.nl\/?p=1915"},"modified":"2026-08-21T14:59:04","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T14:59:04","slug":"crypto-staking-tax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/callistocapital.nl\/en\/crypto-staking-tax\/","title":{"rendered":"Tax on staking and lending proceeds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anyone who holds crypto and lets it work through staking, or lends it out through lending, will see new coins arrive over time. The question that then comes up is how those proceeds are taxed in the Netherlands. The short answer: where the holding is passive, the Belastingdienst starts from box 3<\/a>, the tax on your wealth. The fuller answer carries more nuance, because under certain circumstances box 1 comes into view: the tax on income from work and business.<\/p>\n

Starting point: box 3<\/h2>\n

The Belastingdienst is clear about it: “crypto belongs to your assets in box 3.” The tax-return page puts it just as concretely: crypto holdings such as bitcoins fall under “bank accounts and other assets”. For a private individual that means something important. Within box 3, receiving staking or lending rewards does not, in principle, trigger a separate charge at that moment. Staking or lending coins you receive simply add to the wealth that is measured in box 3 on the reference date of 1 January.<\/p>\n

The charge, moreover, is not levied on your actual proceeds. It is not the staking or lending amount you actually received that is taxed, but a deemed return on the value of your holding (the formal Dutch term is forfaitair rendement); how that levy is calculated is set out in our article Crypto in box 3<\/a>. Crypto falls within the category “other assets”. For that category the Belastingdienst applies a deemed return of 6.00 percent for the 2026 tax year (5.88 percent in 2025 and 6.04 percent in 2024). The resulting box 3 income is taxed at a rate of 36 percent, in both 2025 and 2026. The reward itself therefore stays outside any separate income item, as long as everything falls in box 3.<\/p>\n

A tax-free allowance does apply. For 2026 that is 59,357 euro for a single person and 118,714 euro with a tax partner (57,684 euro and 115,368 euro in 2025). Only above that threshold, together with your other box 3 wealth, does crypto lead to a charge. The deemed return for other assets is already fixed for 2026; the percentages for bank balances and debts are not finalised until early 2027. Alongside this, a broader reform of box 3 towards actual return is under way, which will change the system over the coming years.<\/p>\n

Valuation and the reference date<\/h2>\n

For box 3, one moment counts: the reference date of 1 January, 00.00 hours, of the year for which you file. Price movements during the year do not count for this charge. You declare the value of your crypto as it stood on the reference date, at the price on the exchange platform you use: the value in economic terms. Coins you received during the year through staking or lending therefore count at their value on the next 1 January.<\/p>\n

When it becomes box 1<\/h2>\n

Box 3 is the starting point, not a guarantee. The boundary lies at normal asset management, that is, ordinary investing without extra work: stay within it and it falls in box 3. As long as you hold crypto passively and have it staked or lent out through a platform, it usually stays within that normal management of assets. If the nature of the activity changes, the proceeds can shift to box 1.<\/p>\n

The Belastingdienst puts it sharply for trading: you do not have to declare the proceeds, unless you earn extra income frequently “through extra work, on top of your investment activities”. In that case you do declare those proceeds, as income from other activities or as profit from a business. For mining the tax office draws the same line: the proceeds need not be declared, but “this changes if your proceeds exceed your costs”. Income in box 1 may then be at issue.<\/p>\n

Legally, that box 1 route hangs on article 3.90 of the Income Tax Act 2001 (Wet inkomstenbelasting 2001), the “taxable result from other activities”: income from activities that go beyond investing. Its counterpart for box 3 is article 5.2, “benefit from savings and investments”. What normal asset management is exactly is not set out in the statute; that boundary follows from case law and depends on the facts and circumstances, such as the extent of the work and whether there is an objective expectation of benefit.<\/p>\n

The Belastingdienst’s line, and what remains unclear<\/h2>\n

Here honesty about the limits of what is settled is in order. In its public crypto guidance the Belastingdienst explicitly names mining and active trading with “extra work”, but it does not name staking and lending. A knowledge-group position (a published tax-office explanation of how a rule is applied) that specifically classifies staking or lending rewards does not exist in the public sources.<\/p>\n

What does exist is a related position on forks (KG:202:2023:12, updated on 12 September 2023). Coins that arise “for free” from a fork are, according to the knowledge group, immediately a box 3 asset, valued at the price on the reference date, with no separate income charge on receipt. That supports the main line: the reward itself is not taxed separately, but counts as wealth. Still, this position concerns forks, not staking or lending. Its application to staking and lending therefore rests on analogy and on the general test of facts and circumstances, not on a ruling that addresses staking by name.<\/p>\n

On balance, passive staking or lending points towards box 3; operating actively and structurally, with work that goes beyond normal management, can shift to box 1. Where exactly the boundary lies depends on your own situation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anyone who holds crypto and lets it work through staking, or lends it out through lending, will see new coins arrive over time. The question that then comes up is how those proceeds are taxed in the Netherlands. The short answer: where the holding is passive, the Belastingdienst starts from box 3, the tax on…","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1920,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"callisto_views":2,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1915","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\/1915","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=1915"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/callistocapital.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2289,"href":"https:\/\/callistocapital.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1915\/revisions\/2289"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/callistocapital.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/callistocapital.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/callistocapital.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/callistocapital.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}