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 marketplace where you purchased/sold the virtual currency. If the exchange rates/documentation from your provider are not available, you can use the exchange rates for a likely market value offered by another trustworthy provider. Major providers, such as Coinmarketcap offer historical exchange rates for most virtual currencies online for free.
If you’ve used other virtual currency as payment, the currency has been realised for tax purposes. Then you must also report gain or loss on the virtual currency 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.
There are two ways of doing this in the card for Virtual assets/cryptocurrency:
- You can either enter the information for each virtual asset/cryptocurrency in a separate card, or
- enter the summarised information for all virtual assets in one card, with an attachment showing the information for each virtual currency and other virtual assets.
Log in to the tax return, select the topic Finance and then the card Virtual assets / cryptocurrency. You’ll find information and guidance on what to do and how to proceed once you’re logged in. There are help texts for every field.
Bitcoin-based ETF/ETP (exchange-traded products) are financial instruments connected to cryptocurrency. If you own such financial products that are not stated in the tax return, you must enter them under Other financial products and virtual assets / cryptocurrency and in the card Other financial products.
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.