Form 721: crypto held abroad, and why it is not form 720

This is not tax advice. Form 721 depends on residence, on who holds the keys, on the accounts and on exclusions Article 42 quater lists. This page summarises rules published in the official state gazette and on the tax agency’s site. It does not work out whether you must file.

Form 721 is the informative return for virtual currencies situated abroad. It is approved by Order HFP/886/2023 of 26 July (BOE-A-2023-17429). The obligation it implements is Article 42 quater of the general regulations on tax management and inspection, added by Royal Decree 249/2023 of 4 April (BOE-A-2023-8576). It is not Form 720. Form 720 is the informative return on assets and rights situated abroad; Form 721 is the one specific to virtual currencies. Mixing them was easy when 720 already existed and 721 did not. Since the 2023 order, the route for virtual currencies abroad is 721.

Updated November 2026. Nothing in the official gazette texts cited here is a 2026 rewrite of Form 721 that should be treated as a statute other than Order HFP/886/2023 and Article 42 quater. A draft that is not in the gazette is not summarised here. Re-open the tax agency’s page for the form before filing: a form’s layout can change without this page having seen it.

Who, and which coins

Article 42 quater(1) obliges individuals and companies resident in Spain, permanent establishments of non-residents, and the entities in Article 35.4 of the General Tax Law. The duty covers virtual currencies of which you are the holder, beneficiary or authorised person, or over which you have a power of disposal, or of which you are the beneficial owner under Article 4(2) of Law 10/2010, custodied by someone who safeguards private cryptographic keys for third parties, at 31 December. It also covers someone who lost that position during the year: the information is then given as at the date the position ended.

Paragraph 2 treats the currencies as situated abroad when the person who custodies them, providing that safeguarding service, is not under the reporting duty in Article 6 of the thirteenth additional provision of the personal-income-tax law. In short, the test is not “the server is abroad”. It is who custodies, and whether that custodian must already report in Spain. The tax agency’s FAQ says this in the same terms.

The €50,000 and the later €20,000

Paragraph 5(d) says there is no obligation to report any virtual currency when the 31 December balances referred to in paragraph 3(c), valued in euros, do not together exceed €50,000. If the joint limit is exceeded, all of them are reported. Valuation, paragraph 3(c), uses the 31 December price on the main trading platforms or price-tracking sites or, failing that, a reasonable estimate of market value, stating the price used.

Paragraph 6 sets the window: between 1 January and 31 March of the following year. Article 4 of the Order repeats that window and says filing is electronic. The same paragraph 6 adds that in later years the return is obligatory again only when the joint balance has increased by more than €20,000 compared with the balance that triggered the last return. A return is in any event required in the extinction cases in the last subparagraph of paragraph 4. The order applied for the first time to 2023, filed in 2024. The window is not a fresh campaign invented each year: it is the same article, for the year in question. For 2026 information, the period written in the rule is 1 January to 31 March 2027.

What stays out: self-custody

The tax agency’s FAQ asks whether a hot wallet or a cold wallet matters. The answer requires two conditions before a duty arises: the coins are custodied by persons or entities that safeguard keys for third parties, and those persons or entities are not resident in Spain and are not permanent establishments here. If the holder keeps control of the keys and there is no such third party, those coins are left out of the balances in paragraphs 3(c) and 5(d) and are not reported. It does not matter, the agency says, whether the wallet is online. The self-custody guide is about a different statute, the transfer regulation, not this form. Holding the keys does not excuse the income-tax return if there was a gain. On the agency’s terms, it takes those coins out of Form 721.

Exclusions that are easy to skip past

Paragraph 5 also excludes, besides the threshold, other coins: those held by the entities in Article 9(1) of the corporate-income-tax law; those held by resident legal persons and entities, and permanent establishments, recorded individually in their accounts and identified by name, value, custodian and country; and those held by resident individuals carrying on an economic activity and keeping accounts under the Code of Commerce, with the same degree of identification. These are not a tip to “book it and forget”. They are exclusions with recording conditions. If the conditions are not met, the exclusion does not arise. This page does not say whether your accounts meet them.

Form 721 does not replace Form 100. Reporting a balance abroad does not settle a capital gain. The campaign in which that gain is declared, for the 2026 tax year, is the 2027 campaign, and its dates are not published as of November 2026: the 2027 income-tax checklist says so. How that sits next to what providers will report between administrations is in the calendar and, for the reporting regime itself, in the DAC8 article. DAC8 is not Form 721. One is an exchange between states; the other is a resident’s return.

Common questions