Austrian Tax Rules: No Rolling Average Price for Multiple Wallets
Austria's cryptocurrency regulation has a unique approach to calculating the acquisition cost of Bitcoin across multiple wallets. In contrast to some other jurisdictions, Austria does not pool all Bitcoin holdings into a single average price. Instead, the rolling average price is worked out for units of the same cryptocurrency on the same address or wallet.
For example, if an investor holds 0.5 BTC bought for 10,000 euros in one wallet and another 0.5 BTC bought for 25,000 euros in a separate wallet, they will have different tax-relevant average prices. The two holdings are not automatically merged into a common acquisition price just because both wallets belong to the same person.
The rolling average price only applies at the level of the same cryptocurrency address or wallet. If an investor buys multiple units of Bitcoin on the same address, the acquisition costs are pooled. This means that if an investor buys 0.1 BTC for 2,000 euros and later another 0.1 BTC for 4,000 euros on the same address, the total acquisition cost will be 6,000 euros.
However, legacy holdings from before March 2021 are not folded into the rolling average price of the tax-relevant new stack. This means that investors who hold old Bitcoin on the same wallet as newly bought coins may still benefit from selling their old Bitcoin tax-free under the earlier Austrian tax rules.