Deductible Costs for Crypto in Poland: What Counts

Poland gives crypto its own category in the personal income tax act, article 30b, with a flat 19% rate, its own form, and one genuinely unusual rule about costs. That rule is the reason this topic is worth more than the rate is.

How the Polish computation works

Your taxable income is computed for the whole year rather than transaction by transaction: total revenue from disposals to fiat, less total deductible costs, taxed at a flat 19%. There is no allowance, no threshold and no exemption, so even a small gain must be reported.

A taxable event arises when you exchange crypto for traditional currency such as zloty or euro, or pay with it for goods or services. Crucially, crypto to crypto exchanges are not taxable, and neither is buying or holding.

What counts as a cost

The list is short and it is meant to be. Deductible costs are essentially the acquisition price of the crypto and direct transaction fees. Hardware, electricity and similar expenditure do not count.

That exclusion is the point people argue with, and it is worth understanding rather than resenting: because crypto to crypto exchanges are outside the tax, the Polish regime is not trying to measure the economics of running an operation. It is measuring what you paid for the coins and what you got when you turned them into money.

The rule that actually matters

Here is the part most Polish crypto holders do not know, and it is worth real money.

You declare costs even in a year with no sale, and unused costs carry forward to later years until your revenue exceeds them. In practice that also allows losses to be carried into the future.

Read the consequence carefully. A year in which you bought crypto and sold nothing looks like a year with nothing to file. It is not. It is the year in which you register the cost that will shelter a future gain. Skip the filing and you are not preserving a neutral position, you are discarding an asset.

This is the single highest value action available to a Polish crypto holder, and it is available only in the year the cost arises.

Mining and staking are treated unusually

Receiving crypto from mining or staking is generally not taxed at the moment of receipt. Tax arises when you later sell those coins for traditional currency, at 19%, and with no acquisition cost to deduct for coins you did not buy.

That combination is worth sitting with. Deferral at receipt is favourable compared with jurisdictions that tax rewards on the day they arrive. Zero deductible cost on disposal is unfavourable, because the whole sale proceeds become taxable income. Whether the package suits you depends on how long you hold and what happens to the price in between.

Which form and when

Individuals outside business activity file PIT-38, showing total revenue and total costs for the year. Trading within a registered business is settled differently, through PIT-36, PIT-36L or CIT. The filing window runs from 15 February to 30 April for the previous year, and the tax year is the calendar year.

Keep documentation of acquisitions, disposals and fees for at least five years. From 2026, exchanges report automatically to the Krajowa Administracja Skarbowa under the Polish transposition of DAC8, so your declared figures increasingly sit next to a dataset the authority already holds.

A checklist

• File PIT-38 in any year you incurred costs, even with no sale.
• Record the acquisition price and the direct transaction fee for every purchase.
• Do not include hardware or electricity, and do not build a plan around them.
• Track carried forward costs across years, since that balance is the thing being preserved.
• Separate mined and staked coins in your records, because they carry no acquisition cost on eventual sale.

Our PIT-38 guide covers the form, and Polish crypto tax covers the framework.

General information, not tax advice. Rules change and depend on your circumstances. Confirm the current position with the relevant tax authority or a qualified tax professional.