Regularise undeclared cryptocurrencies before Hacienda finds out

File a complementary IRPF return yourself, before Hacienda requires it, for each year you sold, exchanged or spent cryptocurrencies with a gain and did not include it in your tax return. The Ley General Tributaria (the General Tax Act) (article 122) allows you to complete an already filed self-assessment at any time, provided Hacienda's right to assess that year has not expired. If you did not even file a tax return, you must file a late return, following the same rules. From the 2024 tax return onwards, the correction is filed as a rectifying self-assessment, whether you have to pay or receive a refund; for 2023 and earlier, it remains a complementary return. In this guide, 'complementary' applies to both.

The difference compared to waiting is significant. If you regularise on your own, you pay the missing tax and a surcharge for the delay, but there is no penalty: article 27 of the law expressly states that the surcharge excludes penalties. If Hacienda detects you first, you pay the same tax, late payment interest and a penalty starting at 50% of the unpaid amount.

At Managora we handle it from start to finish with our Cryptocurrency regularisation service: we reconstruct your transactions from all exchanges and wallets, calculate the gain or loss for each year, file the complementary returns and, if applicable, the overdue modelo 721. You can see the updated price on the service page. If you already have the calculation and only need to file 1 year, our Complementary income tax return service is enough.

Those that have not expired. Hacienda has 4 years to assess a tax (article 66 of the Ley General Tributaria) and that period starts the day after the deadline to file the tax return for that year (article 67). As the income tax campaign ends on 30 June, each financial year remains open for 4 more years from that date, unless the period has been interrupted.

As of 1 October 2026, the 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 financial years remain open. The 2021 financial year has already expired: its deadline ran out 4 years after 30 June 2022, unless Hacienda interrupted the limitation period with an action notified to you regarding that tax. However, you must keep the history from the first purchase even if it is from a closed year: it sets the cost used to calculate the gain of subsequent sales.

Each year is regularised separately. The law requires the late self-assessment to identify the period it refers to and contain only the data for that period (article 27.4). Mixing gains from several years in a single return forfeits the surcharge and turns the delay into a minor infringement (article 191.6).

Any transaction that changes the composition of your wealth generates a capital gain or loss (article 33 of the Ley del IRPF, the Personal Income Tax Act). With cryptocurrencies, this happens when you sell them for euros or another currency, when you exchange one cryptocurrency for another even if the money never converts to euros, and when you pay for a good or service with them. Buying and holding is not taxed under IRPF.

The gain is the difference between what you obtained upon transfer and what it cost you to acquire, including purchase and sale commissions. When you have bought the same cryptocurrency on several dates, Hacienda applies the FIFO method: it is understood that you sell the units you bought first, adding up those from all your exchanges and wallets.

Cryptocurrency gains and losses are taxed in the savings base. For 2025, the scale is 19% up to €6,000, 21% from €6,000 to €50,000, 23% from €50,000 to €200,000, 27% from €200,000 to €300,000 and 30% from €300,000 onwards. The brackets are the same throughout Spain except in the Basque Country and Navarre, which have their own IRPF.

Staking and lending rewards are declared as income from movable capital, also in the savings base; airdrops go to the general base, at your marginal rate. If you do not know what transactions you had each year, Managora's Cryptocurrency tax report service consolidates all your movements and provides the result per financial year with the boxes for the modelo 100.

If you file the complementary return without a prior requirement, you pay a surcharge of 1% plus another 1% for each full month of delay, counted from the end of the tax return deadline for that year (article 27.2). Up to 12 months there is no late payment interest. After 12 months, the surcharge is a fixed 15% and late payment interest is added from the day after the end of those 12 months until the day you file, at 4.0625% per year in 2026.

The surcharge is reduced by 25% if you pay the complementary return debt upon filing and then pay the surcharge within the period indicated in the assessment notified by Hacienda (article 27.5). The reduction is also kept if you request a deferral or instalment plan guaranteed by a bank guarantee or surety insurance upon filing and meet the deadlines. With the reduction, the 15% becomes 11.25%.

There is no longer a surcharge, there is a penalty. For the law, a prior requirement is any action by Hacienda that you formally know about and that is aimed at checking, regularising or assessing that debt (article 27.1). The penalty regulations state the same: regularisation is voluntary if done before you are notified of a requirement or the start of a check.

The penalty for failing to pay is calculated on the unpaid tax (article 191). It is minor, with a 50% fine, if the tax does not exceed €3,000 or, exceeding it, there was no concealment. It is serious, from 50% to 100%, if it exceeds €3,000 and there was concealment. It is very serious, from 100% to 150%, if fraudulent means were used. To this, the tax and late payment interest from the day after the end of the tax return deadline are added.

In very high amounts, tax fraud comes into play, which the Código Penal (the Criminal Code) sets at a defrauded tax of more than €120,000 per tax and year. Here, full regularisation also protects you: Hacienda does not pass the case to the Ministerio Fiscal (the Public Prosecutor's Office) if you acknowledged and paid the entire debt before being notified of the start of a check (article 252 of the Ley General Tributaria).

The modelo 721 is the informative return for cryptocurrencies located abroad (article 42 quater of the Reglamento de gestión e inspección, the Management and Inspection Regulations). It is filed by residents in Spain who, as of 31 December, had cryptocurrencies custodied by a foreign provider for more than €50,000 in total. The deadline runs from 1 January to 31 March of the following year, and it was filed for the first time in 2024, for the 2023 financial year.

In subsequent years, it is only repeated if the joint balance increases by more than €20,000 compared to the last return, or if you cease to be the owner. It does not include what you keep in an exchange that already reports in Spain with the modelo 172, nor what you have in your own wallet whose keys you control: the rule only speaks of cryptocurrencies custodied by someone who keeps the keys on behalf of third parties.

The old modelo 720 fines disappeared. Following the judgment of the Tribunal de Justicia de la UE (the Court of Justice of the EU) of 27 January 2022 (case C-788/19) and Ley 5/2022, the general regime applies to the modelo 721. Failing to file it costs €20 per data item, with a minimum of €300 and a maximum of €20,000 (article 198.1). If you file it late without a requirement, everything is halved: €10 per data item, minimum €150 and maximum €10,000 (article 198.2).

The modelo 721 does not carry any tax to pay, so the 50% to 150% fine of article 191 does not apply to it; that is for the IRPF you failed to pay. They are two different obligations and are regularised separately. Managora's Modelo 721 service prepares and files the ones you are missing.

Losses also count, but only if they appear on the tax return. The capital gains and losses of the year are offset against each other; if there is a negative balance, it offsets up to 25% of the income from movable capital for that year, and the remainder is carried forward to the following 4 years (article 49 of the Ley del IRPF).

The Dirección General de Tributos (the Directorate General for Taxation) requires the loss to have been declared in the year it occurred to be able to offset it in subsequent years. If you did not include it, it is corrected even if there is nothing to pay: from the 2024 tax return, with the same rectifying self-assessment; in the 2023 and earlier returns, with a rectification request, which is the route referred to by article 122.2 when the result is not a higher amount to pay.

Through 3 channels. Since the 2023 financial year, providers resident or with an establishment in Spain report their clients' balances (modelo 172) and their purchase, sale, exchange and transfer transactions (modelo 173) to the Agencia Tributaria (the Tax Agency). Hacienda cross-checks this data with what you declare on your tax return.

The second channel is the modelo 721 itself, filed by residents with more than €50,000 in cryptocurrencies custodied outside Spain. The third is European cooperation: with the DAC8 directive, EU crypto-asset providers collect data from their clients from 1 January 2026 and the first exchange between countries is scheduled for 2027. As of 1 October 2026, the Spanish transposition law has not been published in the BOE (the Official State Gazette).

What is not regularised now is increasingly likely to arrive as a requirement, and from that moment the surcharge gives way to the penalty.