Crypto holders arriving from countries that tax realised gains often expect nothing to happen until they sell. Dutch treatment runs on a different logic entirely — one date, a deemed return, no sale required — which changes both the annual position and how the recent box 3 compensation rules land for anyone holding coins.
Every year, regardless of whether you sell. Crypto held by a private individual falls under Box 3, the wealth tax, which values everything you hold on 1 January (the peildatum) and taxes a deemed return on that snapshot at a flat 36% — it doesn't matter if the price crashed the next day or you never touched the coins all year. Selling doesn't trigger a separate capital-gains bill the way it would in some other countries; it's ownership on that one date that counts. This also cuts against a common assumption about the recent box 3 compensation rounds: the "actual return" rules that let people claim a lower real return than the deemed one count unrealized value increases as return too, so if your crypto went up on paper, that's real return for tax purposes even unsold — meaning the compensation scheme doesn't automatically help crypto holders and can even work against you in a good year. A more fundamental rework, taxing genuine gains and losses instead of a snapshot, is targeted for 2028, but that date is still moving through parliament and isn't locked in.