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Cryptocurrencies: Tax values 2020 for Swiss net wealth tax purposes

The Swiss Federal Tax Administration (SFTA) has published the list of exchange rates of foreign currencies and cryptocurrencies as per December 31, 2020. The exchange rates are used to determine the tax values of foreign currencies and cryptocurrencies in CHF which individuals have to declare in their private tax declarations for net wealth tax purposes.

| Christian Maeder, Benno Hinni

The list of the SFTA includes the year-end exchange rates of 20 well-known cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC) (CHF 25,476.03), Ethereum (ETH) (CHF 650.93) or Litecoin (LTC) (CHF 110.45). These so-called native-coins have to be valued in accordance with this list and to be declared in the private tax declaration accordingly. However, native-coins that qualify as business assets of an individual are subject to wealth tax according to their book values. Consequently, a taxpayer should, in a first step, analyse whether his/her native-coins are considered business assets or private assets. 

Asset-backed-tokens, such as debt-, equity- or participation tokens, and utility tokens are usually valued according to their year-end exchange rates on crypto exchanges (in case of a listing) or – if no such exchange rates are available – according to the respective original purchase prices.  The complete list of the year-end exchange rates 2020 published by the Swiss Federal Tax Administration is available here:

Christian Maeder
Attorney at Law, Certified Tax Expert
[email protected]
Benno Hinni
Attorney at law, Certified Tax Expert
[email protected]

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