🌍 Everywhere · 8 min
DAC8 explained: how European tax offices now see your crypto
From 2026, exchanges report your identity, trades and balances to the tax office automatically. What is sent, how it is matched, and what to do.
DAC8 is the EU directive that extends automatic tax information exchange to crypto. Since 1 January 2026, crypto-asset service providers that serve EU residents — exchanges, brokers and many custodial apps — collect data about their users and report it every year to their tax authority, which shares it with the authority in your country of residence.
What exactly gets reported
Your identity: name, address, date of birth and tax identification number, verified through the exchange's KYC process.
Annual totals per crypto-asset: purchases and sales against euros or other currencies, crypto-to-crypto swaps valued in fiat, and transfers out of the platform — including transfers to private wallets.
This is the same logic banks have followed for years under the Common Reporting Standard. Crypto is simply no longer the exception.
How the tax office uses it
The data arrives in a standard format, so it can be matched automatically against what you declared. The system does not need to understand every trade; it only needs to see a mismatch — for example, significant sales reported by an exchange while your return shows no crypto gains.
A typical result is not an immediate fine, but a letter asking you to explain the figures and document your cost basis.
An example
Anna opened an exchange account in 2020, deposited about €6,000 over two years, traded actively and later moved part of her coins to a hardware wallet. In 2026 she sells €10,000 worth of crypto. The 2026 report shows the sales; earlier years show nothing declared. The tax office now asks a simple question: what did these coins cost you, and when did you buy them?
If Anna has her full history, she can prove a modest gain. If she does not, she may be taxed on far more than she actually earned.
Self-custody is not invisible
Moving coins to your own wallet does not erase their history. The transfer out is reported, blockchains are public, and coins usually return to a regulated exchange before they become money again.
What to do now
Gather exports from every exchange you have used, including closed accounts, and the addresses of your own wallets. Reconstruct your history with a consistent method (FIFO where required) and, if earlier years were incomplete, ask an adviser about correcting them before the tax office asks.