Crypto Taxes Colombia: What You Owe and How to Stay Compliant

When you trade, sell, or earn cryptocurrency, a digital asset that can be bought, sold, or used for payments. Also known as crypto, it is treated as property by tax authorities—not currency. In Colombia, that means every swap, sale, or airdrop could trigger a tax event. The DIAN (Colombian tax authority) started cracking down in 2023, and if you’ve moved crypto without tracking it, you’re at risk. This isn’t about speculation—it’s about legal compliance.

Many people think if they didn’t cash out to pesos, they don’t owe anything. That’s wrong. Selling Bitcoin for Ethereum? Taxable. Receiving a token from an airdrop? Taxable. Earning interest in DeFi? Also taxable. The DIAN, Colombia’s National Tax and Customs Directorate. Also known as Dirección de Impuestos y Aduanas Nacionales, it now requires crypto transactions to be reported just like stocks or real estate. They’re cross-referencing exchange data, blockchain analytics, and bank transfers. If you used Binance, Luno, or even a P2P platform like LocalBitcoins, your activity is visible. You don’t need to be rich to owe taxes—you just need to have moved crypto.

There’s no official crypto tax form in Colombia yet, but you must report gains under rentas de capital (capital income). You calculate profit by subtracting your purchase cost (including fees) from the sale value in Colombian pesos at the time of the trade. The rate? Up to 39% depending on your total income. Losses can offset gains, but only if you document them properly. No receipts? No deduction. That’s why people who used DeFi, a system of financial services built on blockchain without banks. Also known as decentralized finance, it enables lending, swapping, and earning without intermediaries. for yield farming or liquidity mining are especially vulnerable—they often have no clear cost basis and no transaction history from a regulated platform.

What about mining? If you mined Bitcoin or Ethereum in Colombia, the value of the coins when you received them counts as income. That’s the day’s market price in pesos. If you later sell them, you pay capital gains on the increase. The same applies to staking rewards, airdrops, and even NFT sales. The DIAN doesn’t care if you didn’t know the rules—you’re still responsible. And penalties for undeclared crypto can be steep: fines up to 400% of the unpaid tax, plus interest.

There’s no grace period. The clock started ticking in 2023, and filings for 2022 and 2023 are already due. If you’re just learning this now, don’t panic—but don’t wait. Start by pulling your transaction history from every wallet and exchange you’ve used. Use a free tool like Koinly or CoinTracker to calculate gains, even if you file manually. Keep records for at least five years. If you’re unsure, talk to a local accountant who’s handled crypto cases before. Most don’t know the rules yet, but some do—and they’re getting busy.

Below, you’ll find real guides from people who’ve been through this. Some explain how to track trades across multiple wallets. Others break down how airdrops like SAKE or MixMarvel are taxed in Colombia. There are also warnings about scams that pretend to help you file—those are just new ways to steal your crypto. What you’ll find here isn’t theory. It’s what people in Medellín, Bogotá, and Cali are actually doing to stay out of trouble with the tax man.