The Netherlands has withdrawn a plan to tax unrealized gains on Bitcoin and other crypto at 36 percent a year, and will instead tax investment profits only when investors actually sell.
Prime Minister Rob Jetten and Finance Minister Eelco Heinen set out the reversal in a September 29 letter to parliament, after months of criticism of the proposal. The earlier plan, part of an overhaul of the Box 3 wealth tax, would have charged 36 percent each year on paper gains in liquid assets, crypto included, starting in 2028. The replacement taxes realized gains from 2028 for most financial instruments, with direct crypto holdings joining the same regime around 2030 if parliament signs off.
The cabinet had defended the actual-return model as the fairest fix for Box 3, which taxes a deemed return rather than what a portfolio really did. Under current rules, Dutch crypto holdings sit in Box 3 with a notional 6.00 percent return for 2026, taxed at 36 percent, no matter whether the holder made money or lost it. That model has already been found partly unlawful in court, because its assumed returns diverge from real ones, which is why some reform was unavoidable.
Three regimes, compared
| Regime | What is taxed | Rate | Start |
|---|---|---|---|
| Current Box 3 | Deemed 6 percent return on holdings | 36 percent | In force for 2026 |
| Dropped plan | Actual annual gains, including unrealized | 36 percent | 2028 (withdrawn) |
| New proposal | Realized gains on sale | To be set in law | 2028, crypto around 2030 |
The proposal died for a simple reason: an annual bill on gains nobody had cashed out forces ugly decisions. An investor whose Bitcoin doubled and then gave most of it back would owe tax on the peak year with no proceeds to pay it. Industry groups warned the rule would push wealthy holders and their money out of the country, and the Telegraph reported the government backing down under that backlash on September 30.
For crypto holders the immediate position does not change. Holdings stay in the deemed-return Box 3 until new legislation passes, and realized gains would only become the taxable event from 2028 for securities and around 2030 for direct crypto. What rate would apply to those gains, and whether crypto really lands in 2030 rather than 2028, still has to survive parliament.
The retreat leaves the Netherlands in line with most large jurisdictions. The United States treats every sale or swap of crypto as a taxable event. Germany exempts gains on holdings older than a year. Mark-to-market taxation of private investors is rare because it is expensive to administer and brutal in down years, and the Dutch attempt to join that small club lasted about a year before collapsing.
The court record explains why the cabinet could not simply stand still. The Supreme Court ruled in 2021 and again in later cases that the old deemed-return system produced outcomes with no basis in real returns, and the state has since owed compensation to savers who were overtaxed on savings balances. Each tax year that passes under a regime the courts have already discredited adds to that liability. The actual-return plan was the coalition’s answer, and its collapse leaves the government back where it started, with a broken formula it legally cannot keep and no finished replacement.
Exchanges and custodians serving Dutch clients also dodge a problem that had barely arrived. Annual valuation of crypto positions is straightforward for a broker with clean records, but the deemed-return system asks nothing of the holder at all, and it will keep asking nothing for at least two more years. The compliance burden that the actual-return plan would have created, from cost-basis tracking to year-end statements for every wallet, now shrinks back to ordinary disposal reporting.
The politics are not finished either. Jetten’s cabinet framed the change as a response to investors and businesses, not to the crypto industry specifically, and the same letter covers stocks, bonds and investment gold. Crypto was simply the loudest example, since a 36 percent annual levy on an asset that can halve in a month would have produced the clearest horror stories. Lobbying by the crypto sector mattered, but the taxpayer with an equity portfolio who faced the same bill was the broader constituency behind the retreat.
The opposition will get its say before anything becomes law. A change of this size needs a full parliamentary route, and the coalition’s margins in the Tweede Kamer are narrow enough that tax bills rarely sail through. The 2028 start date for securities already assumes a legislative process that begins soon, and pushing crypto to 2030 suggests the drafters expect friction over valuation rules for self-custodied wallets, where no exchange produces annual statements.
That self-custody question is the part tax officials will find hardest. Realized-gains taxation requires cost basis, which requires knowing what someone paid for coins years ago. For holdings on a regulated exchange the data exists. For coins moved between private wallets, or bought peer-to-peer in 2017, it may exist nowhere, and the new proposal does not yet explain how the Belastingdienst would handle a disposal where the purchase price cannot be shown. Other countries default to assuming zero basis, which taxes the entire proceeds, a solution nobody likes and everyone uses.
The underlying legal problem remains unsolved. Box 3 has been ruled partly unlawful and the state owes redress in some cases, so the cabinet cannot simply leave the system as it is. The realized-gains model is the fallback, not a finished law, and the letter of September 29 is a proposal rather than an act. Investors who spent a year arguing that paper gains are not income got the answer they wanted, for now.
The episode also lands in a wider argument about how governments treat unrealized wealth. Proposals to tax paper gains have surfaced elsewhere in Europe and in US political debate, and each has run into the same arithmetic problem the Dutch hit: gains that exist only on a screen can vanish, but tax bills do not. The Netherlands put a full 36 percent version in writing and then pulled it, which makes the reversal a data point other finance ministries will read before they try the same thing.