Crypto Tax in Serbia: Rate, Deadline and How to File

Sold bitcoin or another cryptocurrency at a profit? In Serbia that is a taxable event: capital gains tax applies to the profit, and the return must be filed within a short deadline most investors only learn about once it has passed. Here is how crypto taxation works and what you need to do.

Crypto is legally digital property

The transfer of digital assets for consideration is explicitly treated as a capital gain, just like selling shares, company stakes or real estate. The capital gain is the difference between the sale and purchase price: if you bought crypto for 2,000 EUR and sold it for 5,000, tax applies to the 3,000 EUR gain, not the whole sale amount.

Rate and deadline

• The capital gains tax rate is 15%.
• The return is filed twice a year. The deadline is 30 days after the end of the half-year in which you earned the income: one deadline for sales from 1 January to 30 June, another for sales from 1 July to 31 December.
• The return is filed electronically on form PPDG-3R.

Once the deadline passes, late payment interest accrues automatically and failure to file is a tax offense.

Proving the purchase price

The biggest practical issue with crypto is documenting the purchase price. The Tax Administration accepts documented costs: exchange statements and transaction history, payment confirmations, contracts. If you bought over several years across multiple platforms, transactions need to be matched and reconstructed chronologically. That is exactly what we do for clients: from a raw exchange report to a properly filed return.

What counts as a taxable event

The clearest case is selling crypto for fiat currency. For more complex situations, such as swapping one cryptocurrency for another, paying for goods with crypto, or mining and staking income, the tax treatment depends on the specific circumstances and type of income. Do not assume something is tax-free before checking: a wrong assumption here can be expensive.

Losses can be used

If some of your transactions ended in a loss, capital losses can be offset against capital gains, under statutory conditions and within a limited period. We cover this in a separate guide on our blog.

We file the return for you

Send us your transaction history and we calculate the gain, offset losses and file PPDG-3R within your deadline. That is our capital gains tax filing service. Sold something this month? Book a conversation now: the deadline for the current half-year is already running.