Crypto Tax Audit: What Evidence the Tax Office May Demand

When the tax office asks about your crypto gains, what decides the matter is not what you experienced but what you can produce. The law requires you to cooperate actively, and it keeps an instrument in reserve for the case where that cooperation fails to appear: the authority then does the calculating itself. This article sets out which documents the tax office may demand, what it bases that on, what applies in addition when your exchange sits abroad, and what happens if you are missing evidence. The legal basis is found in the German Fiscal Code, the Abgabenordnung or AO for short. These provisions are short, old and unambiguous in their wording, and they apply to bitcoin exactly as they apply to any other asset. The only thing that is new is that the authority has recently acquired a data source it did not have before. What happens when the tax office asks about crypto? The standard case is unspectacular and begins with a letter. The case officer reviews your income tax return, comes across income from private disposal transactions and asks for supporting documents. That is not an investigation and not proceedings, it is the normal course of an assessment. How you respond, howeve...