Two questions to clarify
Two clearly separate questions arise around crypto-assets. One is regulation: who may provide crypto services, under what licence and with what consumer protection guarantees. The other is taxation: when and how a private individual's income becomes taxable. The two are connected but not the same. Our series covers both, but in this first part we focus on what directly affects most investors: personal income tax.
The 2022 turning point: separately taxed, favourable income
Act CXVII of 1995 on personal income tax introduced a separate, favourable set of rules for the crypto income of private individuals as of 1 January 2022. Since then, income from a transaction carried out with a crypto-asset qualifies as separately taxed income, subject to a 15 percent personal income tax (személyi jövedelemadó, szja). This was a significant easing compared with the earlier system, because before 2022 crypto income was taxed as other income, as part of the consolidated tax base, and was also subject to social contribution tax (szociális hozzájárulási adó, szocho).
Alongside the favourable rate, the most important principle is that a taxable transaction arises only when the crypto-asset leaves the crypto world. That is, when the individual obtains value in a non-crypto form in exchange for the crypto-asset, for example converts it to conventional money, or buys goods or services with it. As long as a crypto-asset is exchanged for another crypto-asset, no tax liability arises.
What is a taxable event, and what is not?
In practice the puzzle is often whether a given step is a taxable event at all. The most common cases work out as follows.
|
Event |
Taxation |
|---|---|
|
Selling crypto for money, goods or services |
Taxable (15% personal income tax) |
|
Exchanging one crypto-asset for another |
Not a taxable event |
|
Mining, token issuance, creating an NFT |
Not a taxable event (taxed on exit) |
|
Staking yield |
Taxed under the crypto rules |
|
Airdrop (tokens received for free) |
Self-employment income (consolidated base, szja and szocho) |
It is clear that the logic ties taxation to leaving the crypto world. Mining, token issuance or creating a non-fungible token (NFT) is not in itself a taxable event, the tax liability arises later, when the asset obtained is converted to money or spent. An airdrop, by contrast, stands apart, because it is not a crypto transaction but activity income.
An annual view and the small-amount exemption
Another particularity of crypto taxation is that it is aggregated not transaction by transaction but at the annual level. There is a transaction gain in the tax year if the year's revenues exceed the certified costs, incurred in conventional money, of acquiring the crypto-assets and of the fees linked to the transactions. If costs exceed revenues, a transaction loss arises.
There is also a convenient exemption for small amounts. No transaction revenue need be established if the revenue from the given transaction does not exceed 10 percent of the minimum wage, and the annual total of such revenues does not exceed the minimum wage either. Calculated with the 2026 minimum wage, this means a daily limit of HUF 32,280 and an annual limit of HUF 322,800. Our separate summary covers the precise 2026 thresholds and rates: What's how much in 2026 — wages, contributions, tax rates and thresholds.
The 2026 novelty: the time limit on loss offsetting is gone
The most important recent change for this series concerns the treatment of losses. In crypto taxation, losses are handled by the so-called tax equalisation mechanism, which lets an individual account for the tax on a loss as tax already paid. Previously this was possible only for losses from the two years preceding the tax year.
As of 1 January 2026, this two-year time limit has been removed. The individual may take into account a crypto loss incurred in any earlier year, provided it was reported in the tax return, when applying tax equalisation. The flip side of this change is that accurate record-keeping becomes more valuable: the amount of losses not yet offset must be tracked and shown in the return as information data, otherwise the relief is hard to claim.
Where do MiCA and information exchange come in?
The picture is not complete without the regulatory background. The European Union created a uniform framework for the licensing of providers and for investor protection with its regulation on markets in crypto-assets (Markets in Crypto-Assets, MiCA), the domestic supervision of which is carried out by the National Bank of Hungary (Magyar Nemzeti Bank, MNB). In parallel, the automatic exchange of information between tax authorities is expanding, so crypto transactions are becoming far more transparent to the authorities. We return to these topics in later parts of the series.
What's coming in the series?
In the next parts we take the practical questions one by one: what exactly counts as a crypto-asset and a crypto transaction, how to calculate and report crypto income, how crypto-based investment products such as the Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) and the investment fund unit are taxed, what the MiCA regulation brought, and what the information exchange extending to crypto means. The goal is that by the end of the series every private individual clearly sees when a tax liability arises and what to pay attention to already now.
