Taxman Targets Zondacrypto Clients Despite Lack of Funds
Poland's largest cryptocurrency exchange, zondacrypto, halted withdrawals in April 2026. Now, its clients are facing a tax bill on gains they never received.
The National Tax Information Office (Krajowa Informacja Skarbowa) issued two rulings in June and July that state anyone who swapped cryptocurrency to złoty within the exchange's panel has revenue and pays 19% on the gain, even if no withdrawal was made.
The Minister of Finance declined to issue a general ruling for all affected clients because it couldn't be determined whether the funds at Zonda were gone in May. In August, the court in Tallinn declared the exchange bankrupt with EUR 167,000 in assets against EUR 431.9 million in liabilities.
The taxman has taxed an exchange where there was nothing to exchange. The exchange's own reconciliations show it held only 2% of the crypto-assets credited to clients' accounts by the end of 2025.
According to the source, two different disputes are running in this case: one about timing and another about whether the event that should be taxed ever occurred at all. The statute excludes virtual currencies from the cash method, which means revenue arises when the exchange writes złoty into the panel or when the taxpayer receives them.
The second dispute is about what constitutes an 'exchange' under the tax law. The source argues that a click in an unbacked panel does not create a transaction and thus should not be taxed. The statute does not know this situation, and the only events that really happened are the deposit into the exchange and the withdrawal from it.
When a client of a crypto exchange clicks 'sell', nothing happens on any blockchain. The bitcoin doesn't change address, and the złoty doesn't leave any bank. Two numbers change in the operator's database: one goes down, and the other goes up.
The source explains that clients do not own cryptocurrency; they have a claim to it. This is because the client has a contract with the operator, which promises to hand over bitcoins or złoty on demand as shown in the panel. A lawyer would call this a claim, and a civil lawyer would add that it's similar to an irregular deposit under Article 845 of the Civil Code.
The source notes that tax law has turned a blind eye to this for years, and rightly so. On an honest exchange, the claim is backed one-to-one, enforceable on demand, and convertible at any moment into coins in the client's own wallet or a transfer from a bank.
However, what stood behind Zonda's mirror is known today from three sources: the company's books, its own wallet reconciliations, and the trustee's report. The books were kept by an external accountant who had no access to the accounts, wallets, or custodians' systems.
The interim trustee's report describes how the books came into being. They were kept on the basis of data supplied by the management, but they did not reflect reality. Liabilities to clients reached him as aggregate sums.
From those books came a balance sheet as at 22 April 2026: assets of nearly EUR 477 million, including EUR 346.5 million in cryptocurrency, equity of plus EUR 44.7 million, and a result for the period from 1 January 2025 to 22 April 2026 of EUR 5.13 million.