Purchases of digital currency

If you've purchased digital currency such as bitcoin, you must declare it in your tax return. You can read more about how you should assess the value here.

What you must do

Purchases of digital currency have no tax consequences at the time of purchase. 
You should not declare the costs attributable to the purchase until you sell, so when you sell your digital currency, you must know how much you paid. You should therefore keep documentation showing:

  • Date of purchase
  • Transaction costs
  • Market value as of the date of purchase. Use the exchange rate of the market place where you purchased the digital currency. If it's difficult to obtain exchange rates/documentation from the provider, a number of organisations offer historical exchange rates for the most common currencies.

If you used a different digital currency as payment, this currency will be realised for tax purposes. You must then follow the procedure described in the next item to declare any gain or loss on the digital currency that you used as payment.

You’ll get information about how many bitcoin and other digitial currencies you’ve purchased and the dates from your intermediary, crypto exchange, marketplace or the like.

Each unit of a digital currency has an input value. If you purchase the same digital currency at different times and at different prices, the units will have different input values.

The input value for a unit is the price you paid at the time of purchase including transaction costs. You must declare the value in Norwegian kroner using the exchange rates applicable as of the date of purchase.

Example

Input value in Norwegian kroner = Number of digital units x exchange rate for the digital currency x USD exchange rate + (transaction cost x USD exchange rate if the transaction cost is in USD)

  • You purchased 1.32 bitcoins on 13 October 2020
  • The bitcoin exchange rate at the time was USD 11.471,38
  • The USD/NOK exchange rate was 9.1561
  • The transaction costs per transaction were USD 3.

Input value in Norwegian kroner: (1,32 x 11.471,38) x 9.1561+(3 x 9.1561) = NOK 138 671,16

If you own digital currency at the end of the income year, you must declare the market value as wealth in your tax return.  

What to do in the tax return

There are two ways of doing this in the card Virtual assets / cryptocurrency:

  • you can enter the information for each virtual asset in its own card, or
  • enter the summarised information for all virtual assets in one card, with an attachment showing the information for each virtual asset and other virtual properties

Log in to the tax return and select the topic Finance - Virtual assets / cryptocurrency. You’ll get information and guidance on what to do and how to proceed when you’re logged in. There are help texts for every field.

A tip is to add fields for currency if you want to list wealth for example in USD (American Dollars) or EUR (Euros).

Logg in to the tax return.

Here you’ll find guidance on how to complete and what to include in the form.

Making changes in previous years’ tax returns

If you’ve discovered errors, or if something is missing, in your tax return for previous years, you can change your tax return.

You do not need to send us any documentation, but you must be able to present documentation if we ask for it.