Latvia's One-Time Crypto Declaration: Who Gains from the 10% and What the Law Leaves Open

On 15 October 2026 the Saeima amended Latvia’s Personal Income Tax Law, and the changes took effect on 23 October. For crypto holders they do two things. They create a one-off chance to declare the crypto you hold on 31 December 2026 and pay 10% of its value – in exchange for a fresh cost basis and a statutory presumption that your income-tax obligations on those assets, and on the income used to buy or swap into them, are settled up to the end of 2026. And they let crypto-assets into the investment account (ieguldījumu konts), Latvia’s tax-deferred wrapper.

The law is narrower than some of what has been said about it. It covers personal income tax only, it says nothing about criminal liability, and it does not clean up every past period – only the declared assets and the income that went into them. Below: what the statute actually provides, when declaring pays, what it leaves open, and what to do before the year ends.

General information as of 29 October 2026, not individual tax or legal advice. The fundamentals of crypto taxation in Latvia are in our full guide.

In short

• A voluntary, one-off declaration for individuals resident in Latvia for tax purposes. It covers crypto held on 31 December 2026 in an account with an EU-registered, MiCA-authorised crypto-asset service provider, or at your own self-custody address.
• The rate is 10% of market value, measured as the average price over a six-month period on a MiCA trading platform. It is not the 31 December price.
• Once the tax is paid, the declared value becomes your new cost basis, and your income-tax obligations on those assets and on the income used to acquire or exchange them are treated as met for the period up to the end of 2026.
• Dates: file between 1 April and 31 May 2027; one correction is allowed until 30 June; pay by 23 July.
• Rule of thumb: declaring pays when your documented cost is below roughly 61% of the declared value. A cost you cannot document counts as zero.
• Not a general amnesty. Income tax only, no mention of criminal liability, and unavailable to state officials (including former ones who held office while holding the crypto) and to anyone facing a crypto-related tax audit, tax control, criminal case or administrative offence case on the day they file.
• Investment accounts can now hold crypto. Banks and investment firms that provide crypto services themselves could offer one today; crypto-asset service providers must wait for Cabinet regulations due by 30 December. We are not aware of any such product yet.

What the law provides

The rules sit in transitional provisions 210–218 of the Personal Income Tax Law (likums “Par iedzīvotāju ienākuma nodokli”).

Who can declare. A resident taxpayer – in practice, an individual. Crypto owned by a legal entity, such as a company, is out of scope.

What you declare. Crypto you own that, on 31 December 2026, is held:

1. in your account with a crypto-asset service provider that is “registered in the European Union” and authorised under MiCA. You state the provider, each asset’s name and ticker, the quantity and the value;
2. at your own self-custody address. You state the address, the asset, the quantity and the value. For this second group only, the law excludes crypto acquired with criminal proceeds.

What you pay. 10% of market value as at 31 December 2026, determined “by the average price on a crypto-asset trading platform operated in accordance with” MiCA “over a six-month period”. What that means in practice is covered below.

What you get. Once the tax is paid:

• the declared value becomes the asset’s initial acquisition value – your cost basis. On a later sale, the 25.5% capital-gains tax applies only to growth above it;
• you are treated as having met the income-reporting and tax-payment requirements of the Personal Income Tax Law up to 31 December 2026, for these assets and for the income used to acquire or exchange them, regardless of the period in which that income was earned (provision 213).

Both effects depend on payment. A declaration that is filed but not paid will most likely leave you with a tax debt and none of the benefits.

Step	Deadline
File the declaration with VID (the State Revenue Service)	1 April – 31 May 2027
The one permitted correction	by 30 June 2027
Pay into the unified tax account	by 23 July 2027

Should you declare? The 61% rule

Declaring pays if the 10% you hand over now is less than the tax you would otherwise owe on a later sale. Take an asset with a declared value V and a documented cost C:

• without declaring, a sale at price P is taxed at 25.5% × (P − C);
• with declaring, you pay 10% × V now and 25.5% × (P − V) when you sell – a total of 25.5% × P − 15.5% × V.

Any growth above V is taxed the same either way, so only the relationship between C and V matters. Declaring wins when C is below 15.5/25.5 of V – roughly 61%. Put differently: when the unrealised gain is more than about 39% of the value.

Example: €100,000 of declared value, later sold for the same amount. With the declaration, the tax is €10,000 in every case. Without it, the tax depends on your documented cost:

Documented cost	Tax without declaring
€0 (no records)	€25,500
€40,000	€15,300
~€60,800 (break-even)	~€10,000
€80,000	€5,100
€100,000 (e.g. a stablecoin bought with already-taxed money)	€0

What the table does not show:

• If the price falls below V. A loss on a sale below the declared value can only offset crypto gains in the same year; it cannot be carried forward. In that case declaring pays only if your sale price exceeds your documented cost by more than about 39% of V.
• Timing. The 10% is due by 23 July 2027 whether or not you sell; the 25.5% is due only if and when you sell. The tax is fixed on 2026 values but paid in summer 2027, and the market risk in between is yours.
• Per asset or per portfolio? If it turns out that you must declare everything (see the open questions below), the test has to be run on the whole portfolio rather than position by position.

Our crypto tax calculator can help you work out your documented cost basis, transaction by transaction.

Who stands to gain

• Holders who cannot prove their cost: early buyers, miners, people who bought P2P or for cash, and users of exchanges that no longer exist (FTX or Mt.Gox, for example). With no records your cost basis is zero, so declaring saves 15.5% of the value.
• Holders whose crypto was bought with undeclared income. Provision 213 extends to the income used to acquire or exchange the declared assets, whenever it was earned. In practice this matters for income VID can still examine: tax audits and controls are limited to three years from the payment deadline, which at filing time means roughly 2024–2026 for capital gains, and 2023 as well for income that belongs in the annual income tax return. Older income is usually beyond VID’s reach already, so there the gain is mainly the new cost basis.
• Traders who reinvested undeclared gains and still hold the result. Those gains are income used to acquire or exchange the declared assets, so they are settled by 10% of the assets’ value rather than 25.5% of the gain.
• Holders of staking, airdrop or mining rewards that are still in their hands. There is a sound argument that provision 213’s words “in respect of these crypto-assets” cover them – which, for declared assets, also settles the old question of whether rewards were taxable on receipt (see our staking, airdrop and DeFi guide).
• Anyone who needs to show where their money came from – to a bank, a notary or in a property purchase. A filed declaration with the tax paid is strong evidence that the tax side is in order, but it does not replace the bank’s or notary’s own source-of-funds checks.

When to sell. If you were planning to sell undocumented crypto in November or December, compare: sell now and pay 25.5% of the whole amount, or hold into January and declare at 10%, carrying the market risk until then. If you then sell in the first quarter of 2027, file the declaration on 1 April and pay straight away: the new basis exists only once the tax is paid, and a quarterly DK return (needed if the quarter’s net gain exceeds €1,000) is due by 15 April.

Who should think twice

• Holders whose documented cost is above roughly 61% of the declared value – often the case for recent purchases and for stablecoins bought with already-taxed money.
• Positions under water: you would pay 10% and lower your own cost basis in the process.
• Anyone planning to sell as a non-resident or to leave the assets to heirs. Heirs take the value stated in the estate as their cost; non-residents’ gains on publicly traded crypto are not taxed in Latvia until the end of 2027; and another country’s tax authority may not recognise a Latvian basis at all.
• Anyone caught by the exclusions below.
• Anyone who will not have the cash for the 10% by 23 July 2027.
• Crypto owned by a legal entity – the declaration does not apply to it.

Five questions the law does not answer

1. All or nothing?

Provision 210 refers to the crypto the taxpayer “owns” and “holds” – which reads as all of it. Provisions 212 and 213, however, attach their effects to the assets declared. Can you declare only some assets, or only some lots? The answer decides whether the 61% test runs per position or across the whole portfolio. It is the biggest open question; until VID clarifies it, run the numbers both ways.

2. Which price: a six-month average, and only from a MiCA trading platform

The value is not the 31 December price but an average over six months on a trading platform operated under MiCA. Several points are unclear:

• Which six months? Most likely 1 July to 31 December 2026 – four of which have already passed – but the law does not say.
• Which platform? On the ESMA MiCA register as of 19 October 2026, only 22 entries listed the operation of a crypto-asset trading platform among their services – Kraken, Bitstamp, Bitvavo, OKX, Gate and Revolut among them. Coinbase, Bybit, Crypto.com, Bitpanda and KuCoin hold MiCA authorisations but do not operate a trading platform, so on a literal reading their prices do not qualify. You can look up any provider in our MiCA register tracker.
• Which average? Daily closes or volume-weighted? And how are pairs that are not quoted in euro converted?
• Tokens with no MiCA-platform price. If a token is not traded on any such platform, the law offers no way to value it, so it is probably not declarable.

The law does not ask the Cabinet to set a valuation method, so expect guidance from VID, which will not be binding. One counterintuitive consequence: if you will eventually sell, a higher declared value is better, not worse. Each euro of declared value costs 10 cents now and saves 25.5 cents on the sale.

3. Where your crypto must sit on 31 December

• Binance, Bitget, MEXC, HTX and Bitfinex are not on the ESMA register, so balances held with them do not qualify.
• 19 providers from Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland – Firi, NBX, K33, Bitcoin Suisse (Europe) and Sygnum Europe among them – are on the MiCA register but are not “registered in the European Union”. Read literally, they do not qualify either.
• Banks and investment firms that provide crypto services under a MiCA Article 60 notification probably do: Latvian law and Latvijas Banka refer to the result of a notification as an atļauja under Article 60. The income-tax provision itself does not address them.
• DeFi. Liquidity pools, LP positions, assets staked with a validator, multisig and smart-contract wallets do not fit the words “own self-custody address”. Uniswap v3 positions are NFTs, and NFTs are not crypto-assets for Latvian income-tax purposes. If you want these assets declared, unwind them into plain tokens at your own self-custody address before the year ends.

4. Who is excluded – and what you cannot know in advance

The declaration is not available to anyone who:

1. on the day of filing, is subject to criminal proceedings for tax evasion connected with crypto income;
2. on that day, is under a VID tax audit or tax control connected with crypto income;
3. on that day, is subject to administrative offence proceedings for non-payment of tax or a reporting breach connected with crypto income;
4. while holding the crypto, was required to file – or now files – a state official’s declaration under the Conflict of Interest Law.

Filers must certify that none of these applies. The certification is not a formality.

The state-official group is wide. It covers not only politicians and senior officials but also, for example, civil servants, professional soldiers, officers with special service ranks in Interior Ministry institutions and the Prison Administration, judges and prosecutors, sworn notaries and sworn bailiffs, insolvency administrators, municipal councillors, management and supervisory board members of state- and municipality-owned companies, members of public procurement committees, and anyone in a public body with the power to issue administrative decisions or carry out supervision and control. One such post at any point while you held the crypto is enough.

What you cannot know in advance. Criminal proceedings can be opened without the person concerned knowing, yet the certification must still be given. A tax control starts when VID sends a letter flagging discrepancies; if one about crypto income has been sent before you file – even if it has not reached you yet – the declaration is no longer open to you. So file early – on 1 April, not 31 May. Whether the single permitted correction counts as a new filing day is unclear.

5. Personal income tax only

Provision 213 deems compliance with requirements “under this law” – the Personal Income Tax Law. It does not reach social security contributions, corporate income tax or state officials’ declarations.

Criminal liability is not mentioned. The Saeima Budget and Finance (Taxation) Committee’s release of 22 September said that people who declared would face no late-payment interest, administrative penalties or criminal liability. The enacted text does not say that in terms: it contains only the presumption that the income-tax requirements have been met. From that, one can argue that there is no unpaid income tax on the covered income on which to base late interest, a fine or a tax-evasion charge. But that is an inference, not a rule – and the law does not address liability for money laundering.

Nor does the declaration clean up every past period. It covers the declared assets and the income that went into them – not earlier sales for euro whose proceeds have since been spent.

What you will have to prove – and why sequence matters

The burden. To assess extra tax, VID first has to establish undeclared income, in a tax control or audit that it can open within three years of the payment deadline. If you then rely on provision 213, it is for you to show that it applies: where a taxpayer disputes VID’s assessment, the taxpayer provides the evidence (Law on Taxes and Fees, Article 38). You will need to show three things:

1. that the declaration was filed and the tax paid;
2. that the assets existed as declared on 31 December 2026;
3. that the specific income went into those assets.

The third is the hard one – especially where money was mixed in a bank account and only part of it went into crypto, where purchases were P2P for cash, or where a chain of swaps ran through exchanges that no longer exist. The law sets neither a standard of proof nor a method for allocating mixed funds.

The cover attaches to assets, not to an amount. The 10% is computed on value, but what it covers is the assets and the income that went into them. Two consequences:

• it is not capped at the declared value. If €100,000 of undeclared income went into tokens now worth €10,000, a €1,000 tax covers the full €100,000 on the text. Expect VID to test that reading;
• it does not automatically cover any income up to the declared value. Undeclared income that was spent is not covered, however large the declared value.

Proving cover reveals more than the declaration does. The declaration itself discloses only end points: providers, addresses and balances. But an address discloses its entire on-chain history. Analytics tools link it to exchange deposit addresses, and VID can request client and trade data from exchanges through administrative cooperation with other EU tax authorities. If you later need to prove that specific income is covered, you will have to show VID the whole path – including the branches that are not covered. Moving coins to a fresh address before year-end does not help: the transaction that funds the new address links the two. And DAC8 data for 2026 reaches VID in the second half of 2027, after the declaration deadline has passed.

A lawful sequence:

1. Self-audit before you file. Trace every flow in the years VID can still examine (roughly 2024–2026, and 2023 too for annual-return income) and sort it into three groups: covered (it went into declared assets), uncovered but beyond VID’s reach, and uncovered and still open.
2. Fix the uncovered, open items yourself. Correcting a filed return before VID issues a tax-control assessment costs the tax plus late interest (0.05% a day) and no fine (Law on Taxes and Fees, Article 33.2); a correction made after VID has notified you that an audit will start adds a 5% fine. If VID finds the gap in an audit, the fine is 20% or 30% of the unpaid tax on top of the interest, and where the loss to the state is large-scale, criminal liability is possible. A return that was never filed can also attract a late-filing fine, and once VID has notified you of an audit, a missing return can no longer be submitted.
3. One-time declaration first, corrections second. The exclusions are tested on the day you file. So file the one-time declaration on 1 April 2027, and only then correct other returns. A correction or late return filed in January–March could trigger a crypto-related control or administrative proceedings before you have filed. Late interest keeps running in the meantime, so build that into the numbers.
4. Build the evidence file now; hand it over only if asked:
   • balances at 31 December 2026: providers’ year-end statements; for self-custody, a signed message (e.g. BIP-322 or EIP-191) and the balance at a stated block height;
   • a valuation workpaper someone else could reproduce: platform, period, averaging method, data export;
   • a provenance ledger per asset from first acquisition: bank statements, exchange CSVs with transaction IDs, on-chain transaction lists, swap, staking and airdrop records; for P2P and cash purchases, contracts, receipts and messages;
   • an income map: each income item and its route into crypto;
   • a gap register with a decision for each item.
5. Keep it for a long time. Supporting documents must be kept for at least five years (Law on Taxes and Fees, Article 15(1)(4)), and this file for as long as you rely on the stepped-up basis: until you sell, and through the audit window after that.

Before 31 December: checklist

• Check where your crypto sits. If you plan to declare, move it off platforms that are not on the ESMA register (Binance, for example) and away from Norwegian, Liechtenstein or Icelandic providers – to an EU provider with a MiCA authorisation, or to your own self-custody address. Transfers between your own accounts are not taxable.
• Unwind DeFi positions you want declared into plain tokens at your own self-custody address, allowing for unbonding periods.
• Gather your purchase records and run the 61% test per asset and for the portfolio as a whole.
• Check your employment history: did you have to file a state official’s declaration at any point while holding the crypto?
• Rethink planned sales. If you meant to sell undocumented crypto this year, compare that with holding into January and declaring.
• File your DK return on time. If you sold crypto at a gain in 2026, the annual DK return is due by 15 January 2027 – even if the gain was reinvested (how to declare in EDS). Plan corrections of earlier periods for after 1 April.
• Set aside the cash for the tax due by 23 July 2027.
• Start the evidence file: year-end statements, signed messages, transaction histories.

Crypto in an investment account

Latvia’s investment account is a tax wrapper: trades inside it are not taxed, and tax arises only on what you withdraw above what you paid in. Since 23 October 2026 it can hold crypto-assets, and crypto transactions are a permitted account transaction (Personal Income Tax Law, Article 11.13).

How it works:

• cash in only. You can pay in cash, plus financial instruments and crypto transferred from another investment account or acquired inside the account. Crypto already in your wallet cannot be contributed;
• proceeds stay inside;
• moving crypto out is a withdrawal. Any payout counts, including a transfer of crypto to, say, your hardware wallet;
• tax on the excess. Income is the amount withdrawn above the cash paid in; it is capital income, taxed at 25.5%.

Who can offer it. A credit institution, a firm licensed to provide investment services (under Latvia’s Financial Instruments Market Law or its home-state equivalent), or a MiCA-authorised crypto-asset service provider that meets requirements set by the Cabinet of Ministers. The provider must be resident in Latvia, another EU or EEA state, an OECD state or a country with a Latvian tax treaty. Only the crypto-asset service provider route depends on the Cabinet regulations, which are due by 30 December 2026.

Where things stand (29 October 2026):

• Banks and investment firms do not need to wait for the Cabinet regulations, but they can offer a crypto investment account only if the same legal entity provides the crypto services – under a MiCA authorisation or an Article 60 notification.
• No Latvian bank is on the ESMA MiCA register. AS TWINO Investments – the first Latvian investment firm to enter the register through an Article 60 notification, in June 2026 – could legally offer one; we are not aware of such a product.
• With a foreign provider, investment-account status is something the taxpayer designates, by notifying VID before the end of the year. In theory that works today with a foreign bank or investment firm that provides crypto services itself. In practice it is untested: the account’s terms must comply (the ability to deposit crypto from outside would breach the rules), and VID may read the Cabinet requirements into the bank and investment-firm routes as well.
• Crypto is not always provided by the group entity that holds the banking licence. Revolut’s crypto services, for example, come from Revolut Digital Assets (Europe) Ltd in Cyprus, not from the bank. Providers in that position have to wait for the Cabinet regulations.

How the declaration and the account fit together. Once the declaration is filed and paid, you can sell at a small gain or loss against the new basis, pay the cash into an investment account and buy back inside it. From then on, trading inside the account – including selling to euro and buying back – is not taxed until you withdraw. Since crypto-to-crypto swaps are untaxed outside an account too (more on that), the account mainly helps people who move in and out of euro often, and it simplifies record-keeping. In practice the route opens only once a suitable product reaches the market.

For providers. A crypto-asset service provider that wants to offer Latvian residents an investment account will have to meet the Cabinet’s requirements once they are published. A bank or investment firm can move now, provided the same entity offers the crypto services itself. If you are weighing either route, see how we work with financial institutions and founders.

Frequently asked questions

What is Latvia’s one-time crypto declaration? A voluntary return that an individual resident in Latvia for tax purposes can file between 1 April and 31 May 2027 for the crypto they hold on 31 December 2026, paying 10% of its value by 23 July 2027. Once the tax is paid, the declared value becomes the new cost basis, and income-tax obligations on those assets and on the income used to acquire or exchange them are treated as met for the period up to the end of 2026.

What price is used to value the crypto? Not the 31 December price, but an average over six months on a crypto-asset trading platform operated under MiCA. On 19 October 2026, only 22 entries on the ESMA register listed the operation of such a platform among their services; Coinbase, Bybit, Crypto.com, Bitpanda and KuCoin were not among them. The law does not say which six months or which kind of average.

When is declaring worth it? When your documented cost is below about 61% of the declared value. Without declaring, a sale is taxed at 25.5% of the difference between the sale price and your cost; with the declaration you pay 10% of the value now and 25.5% only on later growth. A cost you cannot document counts as zero, so without records declaring usually comes out ahead.

Can I declare crypto held on Binance? On the wording of the law, no. Crypto held with a provider qualifies only if the provider is registered in the EU and authorised under MiCA, and Binance is not on the ESMA register. If you want to declare those assets, move them before 31 December to an EU provider with a MiCA authorisation or to your own self-custody address.

Is this a crypto tax amnesty? Only partly. It covers personal income tax, and only the declared assets and the income used to acquire or exchange them. The law does not mention criminal liability, it does not extend to social contributions or other taxes, and it does not cover income that has already been spent. State officials (including former ones who held office while holding the crypto) and anyone facing a crypto-related tax audit, tax control, criminal case or administrative offence case on the day they file cannot use it.

Can I open an investment account with crypto now? The law has allowed it since 23 October 2026. Banks and investment firms that provide crypto services themselves could offer one now; crypto-asset service providers must wait for Cabinet regulations due by 30 December 2026. As of 29 October 2026 we are not aware of any such product available in Latvia.

When to talk to a lawyer

The declaration is a one-off decision whose consequences you may have to prove for years. It is worth talking to a lawyer before 31 December if:

• you use several exchanges and wallets and your records have gaps;
• your crypto was bought with undeclared income, or gains were reinvested without being declared;
• you have DeFi positions, or staking or mining rewards;
• you have held a post in a state or municipal body or company;
• VID has already asked about your crypto income;
• you plan to change tax residence.

We help run the 61% test per position, carry out the self-audit and plan the sequence, build the evidence file, file the declaration and bring past periods in order. Get in touch or see how we work. Related reading: Crypto Tax in Latvia 2026, When Do You Pay Tax on Crypto in Latvia? and DAC8: Crypto-Asset Reporting in the EU.

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Updated: 29 October 2026. Personal Income Tax Law as in force from 23 October 2026. General information only and not individual tax or legal advice.