VAT on crypto transactions in Spain

Exchanging cryptocurrency is exempt from VAT. The Court of Justice of the European Union so held in its 2015 Hedqvist judgment, which treated the exchange of bitcoin for traditional currency as a transaction in currency, and the Spanish Directorate-General for Taxes (DGT) has consistently followed that line. The exemption, however, covers the exchange of the currency itself, not everything that happens around it. Mining raises the question of whether there is a taxable supply at all, since an identifiable recipient of the service is missing. NFTs move away from money and towards electronically supplied services, which have a regime of their own. And the services of the ecosystem —custody, intermediation, advice— must be analysed one by one.

The analyses in this section go through these scenarios, separating what is settled from what remains open.