Gifting Bitcoin to Your Spouse: Allowance, Holding Period and the Report to the Tax Office

If you gift Bitcoin to your spouse, almost nothing happens for tax purposes, and that is exactly the point. The gift itself as a rule triggers no gift tax, because spouses have an allowance of 500,000 euros. Nor does it trigger income tax, because a transfer without consideration is not a disposal. What passes over is more than the coins: your acquisition date and your purchase price travel with them. This article explains which two types of tax can arise at all on a gift to a spouse, which deadlines run, where the practical advantage lies and which records you have to keep so that the tax office recognises the transfer.

One point up front: this is about German law, that is the Inheritance and Gift Tax Act (ErbStG) and section 23 of the Income Tax Act. Anyone resident in Austria or Switzerland works with different rules and different allowances.

Gifting Bitcoin to your spouse: what actually passes over for tax purposes

A gift of crypto-assets touches two entirely separate types of tax, and this is the most common confusion of all. The first is gift tax, and its question is: is the transfer of assets as such taxable? What matters for that is the value of the coins on the day of the gift. The second is income tax on private disposal transactions, and its question is: was a taxable gain realised? That one attaches to purchase and sale.

In a genuine gift there is no sale price, because your spouse pays nothing. Income tax therefore has nothing to attach to, and no taxable gain arises for you, not even if the coins have risen sharply in value since purchase and the one-year period has not yet expired. The unrealised gains do not disappear in the process, though. They carry on in your spouse's hands and are taxed there as soon as they sell.

Technically only one thing is transferred: control over the coins. For tax purposes considerably more is transferred, namely the bundle of acquisition date, acquisition cost and with it the state of the holding period. Anyone who overlooks this plans the gift wrongly at the decisive point.

Gift tax: why the 500,000 euro allowance for spouses is almost always enough

The personal allowance is the amount a recipient may receive tax free from the same person within ten years. For spouses and registered civil partners it stands at 500,000 euros under section 16(1) no. 1 ErbStG. For comparison: children have 400,000 euros, grandchildren 200,000 euros, and people in tax class III, which includes an unmarried partner, come to 20,000 euros.

For the great majority of private crypto holdings in Germany this means: the gift to a spouse remains free of gift tax, with no structuring, no notary and no application. It only becomes taxable above the half million, and then only on the excess. The tax rates in class I start at 7 percent for acquisitions up to 75,000 euros under section 19 ErbStG and rise in bands; spouses always fall into this most favourable class.

An example with assumed figures: you transfer coins worth 180,000 euros on the day of the gift. Your spouse has received nothing from you over the past ten years. The allowance covers the entire transaction and no gift tax is due. You still have to report the gift, and more on that below, because this is the duty that most often fails in practice.

How the tax office determines the value of the gifted Bitcoin

What counts is the fair market value. Under section 9 of the Valuation Act, this is the price that would be achieved in ordinary business dealings on a sale, so for crypto-assets the market price on an established trading venue. Personal circumstances are expressly disregarded.

The decisive day is the day the gift is carried out, not the day you make up your mind. With crypto-assets that is the day the coins arrive in your spouse's control, in other words when the transaction is confirmed. With Bitcoin it is worth looking at the price trend beforehand, for instance in our Bitcoin price prediction, because the price on the reference date decides whether the allowance is enough.

In practice this means: note the date and time of the transaction, the transaction ID, the quantity transferred and the price at that moment with a note of the source. A screenshot of a price page with a visible timestamp is better than a figure reconstructed later. If the price moves sharply on the reference date, document which reference price you chose and why.

Step-into-the-shoes rule: why your spouse inherits your holding period

Here lies the real core of the subject. The step-into-the-shoes principle describes the rule that a recipient who acquires without consideration steps into the transferor's position for tax purposes. The legal basis is section 23(1) sentence 3 of the Income Tax Act: where an asset is acquired without consideration, the acquisition by the predecessor in title is attributed to the successor.

Translated: for tax purposes your spouse is treated as though they had bought the coins on the day you bought them, and at the price you paid. Under section 23(1) sentence 1 no. 2 of the Income Tax Act, private disposal transactions in other assets are taxable only if no more than one year lies between acquisition and disposal. That one-year period therefore keeps running and does not start afresh.

Two consequences follow, and they point in different directions:

• The advantage: if you bought the coins more than a year ago, your spouse can sell them tax free immediately after the gift. The period is already satisfied, and it stays that way.
• The drawback: if you bought only three months ago, your spouse still has nine months to wait. A sale before that is fully taxable, on the gain calculated from your original purchase price, not from the value on the day of the gift.
• The duty behind it: your spouse must be able to evidence your purchase price and your purchase date. Without those records they face the same problem as any investor without proof of acquisition.
• The calculation: where you have bought the same coin several times at different prices, you must disclose for the gifted units which tranche was transferred.

The gift to a spouse is therefore not a tool for shortening a running holding period. All that shifts is whose hands the gain later falls into. If you have to keep track of the holding period across several wallets anyway, the mechanics are set out at length in our piece on borrowing against Bitcoin and the holding period.

Two exemption thresholds instead of one: where the real tax advantage lies

An exemption threshold is something different from an allowance: once it is exceeded, the entire amount is taxable, not merely the excess. For private disposal transactions it stands at 1,000 euros per calendar year under section 23(3) sentence 5 of the Income Tax Act. The statutory wording is unambiguous: gains remain tax free if the total gain from private disposal transactions in the calendar year came to less than 1,000 euros.

This threshold is available to each taxpayer individually, even on a joint assessment. A married couple therefore has two thresholds of 1,000 euros each. Where both partners hold their own positions with their own acquisition history, smaller gains within a year can be spread across two people instead of piling up with one.

The limit of that statement matters: the effect only arises if the coins genuinely belong to the recipient partner in economic terms and they alone can dispose of them. A transfer on paper, where you go on holding the key and triggering every sale, will not be recognised by the tax office. Anyone wanting to track both partners' running gains and losses separately will hardly get by without software; the options are set out in our comparison of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers.

And there is a counter-direction that is rarely mentioned: losses from private disposal transactions can only be offset against gains of the same type of income, and only in the hands of the partner concerned. If the gains sit with one and the losses with the other, the offset comes to nothing. How such a loss can instead be carried into future years is shown in our piece on the crypto loss carryforward.

Reporting duty under section 30 ErbStG: three months, and for both spouses

Tax free does not mean report free. Under section 30(1) ErbStG, every acquisition must be reported in writing to the competent tax office within three months of becoming aware of it. Subsection 2 extends this to gifts between living persons: there the person from whose assets the acquisition derives is also obliged to report. The duty therefore falls on both sides, the donor and the recipient.

The statute knows one exception that practically never applies to crypto-assets: no report is needed where the acquisition rests on a disposition opened by a German court, notary or consul, or is notarially recorded. A wallet-to-wallet transfer between spouses is neither.

The report itself is informal and short. It should contain the personal details of both parties, the family relationship, the subject of the gift with the quantity and type of coin, the day of execution and the value on that day. The competent body is the inheritance tax office, which is not always your local tax office; in several federal states individual offices handle this centrally. A call to your own tax office clears that up in a few minutes.

Why this duty matters more than its low profile suggests: the report is the proof that the transfer took place on a particular date. If the holding period or the attribution of the coins is examined years later, it is the document you can rely on. Without a report, the assertion of a gift stands against the presumption that the coins never really changed hands.

Ten-year period under section 14 ErbStG: how several gifts are added together

The 500,000 euro allowance is not an annual amount. Under section 14(1) ErbStG, several benefits accruing from the same person within ten years are added together, with the earlier acquisitions taken at their earlier value. The allowance is therefore available once per ten-year period.

For you this means two things. First: if you transferred a property or a larger sum of money to your spouse six years ago, that value counts towards the total, and the remaining part of the allowance is smaller than 500,000 euros. Second: the value of the earlier gift is taken at the value on the reference date back then, not at today's value. A crypto holding worth 40,000 euros six years ago and a multiple of that today charges the allowance with only the 40,000 euros of that time.

From this follows a consideration that suggests itself with strongly fluctuating assets: anyone intending to transfer anyway will tend to do so in a phase of low prices, because less of the allowance is then used up. That is a judgment call rather than a recommendation, because nobody knows the future price path, and an allowance that renews every ten years is rarely the bottleneck for private holdings.

Community of accrued gains and section 1365 BGB: when you need your spouse's consent

The community of accrued gains is the statutory matrimonial property regime in Germany: each spouse remains the owner of their own assets, and only when the marriage ends is the accrued gain equalised. Without a marriage contract, married couples in Germany automatically live under this regime, and it has a side effect on gifts that is rarely considered.

Under section 1365(1) of the Civil Code, a spouse may undertake to dispose of their assets as a whole only with the other's consent. What is meant are transactions that in practice cover the entire estate. If your crypto holding makes up the substantial part of your assets and you transfer it in full, this provision may be engaged. On a gift to precisely the spouse whose consent would be required, the problem is defused in practice, because consent lies in accepting the gift. Section 1365 becomes relevant where you transfer to a third person.

A second term belongs here: the unnamed benefit. That is what the case law calls transfers of assets between spouses that are not meant as gratuitous but serve the marital community of life. Whether a transfer of crypto-assets is to be treated as a gift or as an unnamed benefit is a question of the individual case, with consequences for gift tax and for any claim to recovery. With larger holdings this is the point at which tax advice earns its fee.

Custody and attribution: whoever holds the private key decides

With crypto-assets the tax office does not ask whose name appears on a securities account statement, because no such statement exists for self-custodied coins. It asks who can dispose of the coins in economic terms. With a wallet that is the person who controls the private key or the recovery words.

A gift that leaves this point open is vulnerable for tax purposes. If you transfer coins to your spouse but the recovery words stay in your safe and you trigger the transactions, the facts suggest that the coins are attributable to you. The consequence would be unpleasant: a later sale would be attributed to you, gain and holding period included, and the effect of the second exemption threshold would fall away.

The process becomes clean when your spouse sets up their own wallet, generates and keeps the recovery words themselves, and the coins go to an address in that wallet. For holding separate positions, separate hardware per person suggests itself; which devices come into question is set out in our hardware wallet comparison. The same principle applies to an exchange account: a separate account verified in the partner's name, not a sub-group of your own.

Joint wallet and joint account: the hardest case

Many couples hold crypto-assets jointly, often on a device both of them use. For tax purposes this is the least transparent state of affairs, because ownership and attribution cannot be read off the wallet. If an audit comes, other records have to show who owns which part: the bank statements the purchase amounts left from, purchase receipts, and a written agreement between the two of you.

This is also where a gift arises unintentionally. If you buy coins from your account and place them in a wallet your spouse can also dispose of, that is in substance a transfer of assets. Between spouses this usually does not matter thanks to the high allowance, but the ten-year calculation under section 14 ErbStG runs alongside, and the reporting duty exists in principle in that case too.

If you want a clean separation, a simple approach helps: separate wallets per person, purchases always from the account of the person the coins are meant to belong to, and a short written note on every transfer between you with date, quantity and value. That costs a few minutes and later saves a long discussion. Anyone who has already held mixed positions for years is best advised to sort the holding out once and document the result, rather than carrying it forward year after year.

When the marriage ends: equalisation of gains, divorce and the coins

A gift is in principle final. The gifted coins belong to your spouse, even if the marriage later fails. In the equalisation of accrued gains, the increase in value of both estates over the marriage is compared, and a gift between the spouses shifts the starting figures in that exercise. What that means in an individual case depends on the initial and final assets on both sides and is a question of family law, not of tax.

For tax there is a provision governing the relationship between matrimonial property law and inheritance tax: under section 5 ErbStG, the amount a surviving spouse could claim as an equalisation of accrued gains does not count as a taxable acquisition on acquisition by reason of death. The equalisation of gains as such is therefore not a transaction that triggers gift tax; it is the satisfaction of a statutory claim.

A different question is relevant in practice: anyone who can no longer show after a separation who owned which coins is negotiating blind. The documentation you put together for the tax office is therefore also the safeguard for that case.

Unmarried partner, fiance, cohabitee: what differs here

The 500,000 euros apply only to spouses and registered civil partners. Anyone living together unmarried falls into tax class III under section 15 ErbStG and has an allowance of 20,000 euros under section 16(1) no. 7 ErbStG. The tax rates of class III start at 30 percent under section 19 ErbStG.

The difference is substantial: a transfer of coins worth 100,000 euros remains tax free between spouses, whereas with an unmarried partner 80,000 euros would be taxable at 30 percent after deduction of the allowance. The step-into-the-shoes rule under section 23(1) sentence 3 of the Income Tax Act, by contrast, applies regardless of the family relationship, so the holding period travels along here as well.

Anyone wishing to transfer crypto-assets in an unmarried partnership should therefore keep the ten-year calculation carefully and work through larger transfers in advance. The same logic applies to gifts to children, where the allowance stands at 400,000 euros per parent; the specifics for minors we have covered at length in gifting Bitcoin to children.

Common mistakes when gifting Bitcoin to a spouse

From the points above come the places where things regularly go wrong in practice:

• Skipping the report because no tax is due. The duty under section 30 ErbStG does not depend on whether the allowance is sufficient.
• Assuming the holding period starts afresh. In truth it carries on, and a quick sale by the partner is then fully taxable.
• Not passing on the acquisition records. Your spouse needs your purchase date and your purchase price in order to file correctly at all.
• Transferring only formally. Anyone who goes on holding the key and triggering every sale must have the coins attributed to them.
• Forgetting earlier gifts. The ten-year period under section 14 ErbStG also covers money and property, not just crypto-assets.
• Estimating the reference date value later. Without a documented price on the day of execution, the value of the gift is open to dispute.
• Running both holdings in one account in a tax package. Separate taxpayers need separate evaluations, otherwise the second exemption threshold is lost.

None of these points is hard to avoid. All of them together cost less time than a single query from the tax office three years later.

Gifting Bitcoin to your spouse: what to take away

1. Work out the reference date value and the remaining allowance before you transfer. Add up all gifts of the past ten years at their value back then and record the price on the day of execution together with its source. For the running evaluation of both holdings, one of the tools in our comparison of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers will help.
2. Transfer for real, not just on paper. Your spouse sets up their own wallet, generates and keeps the recovery words themselves, and triggers future sales themselves. Suitable devices for separate custody are in the hardware wallet comparison.
3. Report the gift within three months and hand over the acquisition records. An informal letter to the competent inheritance tax office is enough, from both sides. Give your spouse the purchase date, purchase price and transaction ID as well; how to build such evidence is shown in our piece on the crypto loss carryforward.

(As of September 22, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)