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Cryptocurrencies: Swiss Federal Tax Administration publishes tax values for 2021

The Swiss Federal Tax Administration (SFTA) has published the list of exchange rates of foreign currencies and cryptocurrencies as per December 31, 2021. 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 (CHF 43’071.03), Ethereum (ETH) (CHF 3’389.95) and Litecoin (LTC) (CHF 135.28). These cryptocurrencies have to be valued in accordance with this list and to be declared in the private tax declaration accordingly (in the Canton of Zug in the securities section with a remark “other assets”). If a cryptocurrency cannot be found in the list of the SFTA, one may use https://coinmarketcap.com/.

However, cryptocurrencies 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 cryptocurrencies 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 2021 published by the Swiss Federal Tax Administration is available here:

https://www.ictax.admin.ch/extern/de.html#/ratelist/2021

Legal Note: This newsletter does not constitute legal advice and may not be relied upon by any person for any purpose. Any liability for the accuracy, correctness or fairness of the contents of this newsletter is explicitly excluded.

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

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