Holding crypto-assets through a company: IS, related-party transactions and interposition

The analysis of corporate holding of crypto-assets should keep a practical but sober tone, and avoid the simplification that usually leads the conversation: that a company “saves tax” merely by being taxed at a lower rate.

The IRPF–IS comparison cannot stop at the headline rate

The appeal of the corporate structure is usually presented as a difference in rates: that of Corporate Income Tax (IS) against the IRPF savings rates. That comparison exists, but it is incomplete. The real question is another. If the income is kept within the company to be reinvested, the structure may produce deferral and a degree of efficiency; if the real economic intention is to extract funds recurrently to the individual shareholder, the comparison must factor in the later toll of the dividend, the remuneration or the related-party transaction.

Put another way, the usefulness of the company depends less on the initial headline rate and more on three factors: the real economic substance, the fund-extraction policy and the ability to correctly support the accounting, valuation and documentation. A structure without substance, created only to “park” crypto-assets and then draw on the funds from the personal sphere, is far more exposed to challenge on audit.

Buying and selling for oneself: not an economic activity for IAE purposes

A recent doctrinal nuance can be added here. According to ruling V1543-25, buying and selling cryptocurrencies for oneself —whether carried out by an individual, a legal person or an entity without legal personality— does not, on its own, constitute an economic activity for the purposes of the Tax on Economic Activities (IAE), because there is no aim of taking part in the production or distribution of goods or services.

That criterion does not, on its own, resolve all corporate taxation, but it helps deflate the simplistic thesis that one’s own activity, however intense, necessarily turns the company into an operating business for all purposes. A company may be taxed under IS on its results with crypto-assets without that meaning that such holding or proprietary trading allows it to present itself as a robust business structure for the purposes of wealth tax, the family-business exemption or a defence against an interposition challenge. The nuance is useful, precisely, to avoid over-conclusions in either direction.

Related-party transactions, substance and interposition risk

The truly relevant warning lies in related-party transactions and in the substance of the structure. If the shareholder transfers crypto-assets to the company, provides it with management services, finances it or uses company funds for personal purposes, Article 18 of the Corporate Income Tax Act comes squarely into play, with the consequent need to value those transactions at market value and to document them correctly. The more personal and less institutional the structure, the more important this layer becomes.

No grandiose expressions about “shell companies” are needed to convey the risk. It is enough to state rigorously that an asset-holding company with crypto-assets does not, on its own, neutralise the shareholder’s wealth analysis, does not guarantee the family-business exemption of Article 4.Eight.Two of the Wealth Tax Act, and nor does it automatically make the economic relations between shareholder and company deductible or neutral.