Germany May End One-Year Crypto Tax Exemption; Senate Could Vote

Germany will include plans to change how cryptocurrencies are taxed in its 2027 federal budget, Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil told reporters on April 29. Officials are targeting roughly 2 billion euros in additional revenue and said measures will aim to combat financial and tax crime. Under current German law, private gains on crypto are taxable if sold within one year of acquisition but are generally tax-free after that one-year holding period.

Guidance from the finance ministry in 2022 and 2025 confirmed that the one-year holding period also applies to coins used in staking and lending. An earlier proposal to extend the holding period to 10 years was dropped. Industry groups and tax advisory firms identify the one-year exemption as the most likely focus if the government seeks significant new revenue from crypto taxation.

In the United States, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand addressed a digital asset conference and outlined three areas lawmakers must resolve before the full Senate could vote on a market-structure bill: consumer protection, measures to address illicit finance, and strong ethics provisions. She said combining draft market-structure text with the version already passed by the Senate Agriculture Committee and adding clear ethics language could allow a vote before the Senate recess on August 10.

At the conference Gillibrand warned lawmakers would not back the bill without ethics language, saying, ‘There will be no one voting for this bill if we don’t have an ethics provision. We cannot allow members of Congress, senior administration officials, presidents or vice presidents, to get rich off of these industries because of their insider status.’ She added that protections should prevent officials from profiting from insider access to the industry.

Separately, Keonne Rodriguez, a co-founder of the Samourai Wallet crypto-mixing protocol, appealed for donations to cover roughly $2 million in legal fees and debts following his conviction in a money-laundering case. Rodriguez and co-founder William Lonergan Hill were sentenced on Nov. 19 to five and four years in prison, respectively. Rodriguez posted on X that he has been ‘financially wiped out’ and faces a $250,000 fine imposed at sentencing, and he wrote, ‘We are entirely out of options. We need to pay off these legal bills and other debts accrued attempting to defend myself. We desperately need your help. Now.’ Supporters of the developers argue that operators of open-source privacy tools should not be held criminally responsible for how third parties use their software.

Background: Germany’s one-year holding rule, known as the Haltefrist, has exempted private holders from tax on crypto gains after a short holding period. In the U.S., the CLARITY Act and other market-structure proposals aim to define federal oversight of digital assets and set trading and custody rules. Congressional negotiations have stalled at points over investor safeguards, anti-money-laundering measures and ethics language.