Referral rewards crypto: how to declare them in Spanish personal income tax

Referral programs are one of the most common mechanisms in the crypto sector to attract new users. You share your personal link, someone registers and trades, and you receive a portion of their commissions or a fixed bonus. These rewards have specific taxation in Spain.

Types of referral rewards

1. Percentage commission for referral operations

The most common scheme: you receive a % of the commissions your referral pays.

• Example: Binance pays up to 50% of the referral fees perpetually.
• You receive BNB, USDT or other tokens.
• Taxation: Income from economic activity if there is systematicity and with own means. If it is occasional: capital gain on the general basis.

2. Fixed bonus for registering a referral

Some exchanges pay a fixed bonus when the referral registers and meets certain requirements (e.g. makes their first deposit).

• Taxation: Capital gain on a general basis (it is similar to a prize).

3. Discount on referral fees

The referral receives a 20% discount on their own fees.

• Taxation for the referral: The discount is not income; you simply pay less. There is no taxable event.

4. Continuous refer-to-earn (DeFi)

Some DeFi protocols (Hyperliquid, dYdX v4, GMX) pay an ongoing commission for each operation your referral makes on the protocol.

• You receive protocol tokens periodically.
• Taxation: Movable capital or economic activity according to systematicity.

Economic activity or capital gain?

The AEAT differentiates:

• Economic activity: there is an organization of material or human resources with regularity and profit motive.
• Equity gain: has a more occasional nature, without organization.

For crypto referrals:

• A link shared 3 times a year and you receive €200: probably general base GPO.
• A content creator who dedicates time, has a YouTube channel, creates marketing and receives €20,000/year in referrals: probably economic activity.

The AEAT can reclassify if it considers that there is regularity and organization.

Implications of being an economic activity

If the AEAT classifies it as an economic activity:

• Obligation to register with the Treasury (form 036/037) as a self-employed person.
• Self-employed contributions to Social Security.
• Issuance of invoices to exchanges (in practice, difficult if they are foreign exchanges).
• Benefit: possible expense deductions (internet, hardware, training, tax advisor...).

Referrals in DeFi: no KYC, only wallet address

DeFi protocols like Hyperliquid or GMX assign a referral code to your wallet address. Someone trades your code and you automatically receive tokens.

Tax problem: The tokens received in the wallet may have a low market reference value at the time of receipt (unlisted token). When there is a market price, you are taxed on the fair value at the time of receipt.

VAT on referrals

If the referrals are classified as providing services in economic activity:

• The exchanges are usually outside Spain → it may be an intra-community service provision or to third countries.
• In many cases, referral is exempt from VAT because it is a B2C operation outside the territory of application of Spanish VAT.
• Consult with a tax advisor about the OSS/IOSS model if applicable.

How to document referrals

1. Export referral history from the platform (CSV available on Binance, Bybit, etc.).
2. Save screens of each payment with date and value.
3. Convert the value of each payment to EUR at the exchange rate of the day.
4. Add up the yearly total.

Taxation summary

Updated: April 2026 | Fiscal year: 2025