Tax on digital financial assets: a separate base, an operator instead of a broker, and a loss with nothing to offset it against

Income from digital financial assets (DFAs) is subject to personal income tax at the same rates as income from securities, but it is calculated in a tax base of its own, under Article 214.11 of the Russian Tax Code, which has been in force since 2023. The separate base brings three differences from the familiar brokerage account: the tax is withheld by the platform operator, not by a broker; investment deductions do not apply to DFAs; and a loss on DFAs does not reduce a profit on shares and bonds.

A DFA is a digital right that is issued and recorded in an operator's information system under Federal Law No. 259-FZ of 31 July 2020; it is not a security. What kind of right it is, who issues it and who can buy it is covered in the article on how digital financial assets work. This piece deals only with the tax: where it is calculated, who withholds it and which familiar techniques cannot be relied on.

A separate base: what it changes in the calculation

The tax base is the amount on which tax is charged. A private investor has more than one: separate bases are the normal structure of personal income tax. What sets DFAs apart is that they have been given an article of the code to themselves. The result of transactions in them is collected apart from the result on securities, even though in substance a loan raised through a DFA and a loan raised through a bond may be an obligation of one and the same issuer.

The rates, meanwhile, are the general ones for the investment income of a tax resident: 13% within RUB 2.4m of the annual base and 15% above that threshold. The higher rate applies only to the part that exceeds the threshold, not to the whole amount.

What this text does not claim: which payments exactly make up income from DFAs, which expenses reduce it, at what moment the tax is calculated and how the threshold relates to the rest of the year's income. All of this is set out in Article 214.11 of the Russian Tax Code, and it is the current wording of that article that should be checked, not a retelling of it.

The tax is withheld by the platform operator

A tax agent is the party that calculates the tax, withholds it from the payment and remits it to the budget on behalf of the recipient of the income. For securities, this role is usually played by the broker. For DFAs, the agent is the operator of the information system in which the asset was issued, or the operator of a DFA exchange — whichever of them the payment went through. Operators of both kinds are entered in registers that the Bank of Russia maintains and publishes.

The consequence stems from the fact that a DFA lives inside its own platform and cannot be transferred to another operator the way a security moves between depositories. Assets on different platforms mean different operators and, therefore, different agents. Transactions in DFAs do not enter the securities tax calculation kept by the broker, either as a profit or as a loss: their base is separate, and the agent for them is the operator.

How the year's result is brought together when there are several operators, and what happens if the tax was not withheld, is determined by the current wording of the provision and by the procedure of the tax service. That is a question for the operator and for the text of the law, not for experience with a broker. The purchase route and where to look for an operator are described in the article on how DFAs are bought; why an asset can be sold only where it was issued is explained in the review of the secondary market for DFAs.

Deductions that stay on the securities side

Investment tax deductions do not apply to DFAs. This is true of both mechanisms that holders of securities have come to rely on.

• Relief for long-term holding. The long-term holding deduction exempts the profit from the sale of a security that has been held long enough. The holding period of a DFA creates no such right: however long the asset has been held, the relief does not extend to it.
• Deductions on an individual investment account. A third-type individual investment account gives a deduction on the contribution and an exemption of income when the account is closed, but both relate to the account itself and to the transactions on it. A DFA is recorded not in an account with a broker but in the operator's information system, and these deductions do not apply to the income from it.

Hence an adjustment to any comparison based on the stated rate. An identical yield on a DFA and on a bond of one issuer does not mean an identical result after tax if the bond was bought on an individual investment account or its sale qualifies for the relief. The other differences — record-keeping, disclosure, liquidity, protection of the holder — are gathered in the comparison of a DFA and a bond.

A loss on DFAs does not reduce the tax on securities

Netting is the offsetting of a loss on some transactions against a profit on others, after which tax is charged on the remainder. Within transactions in securities this is a familiar technique, described in the article on netting losses. Between DFAs and securities it does not work: a loss on DFAs is not combined with a profit on securities.

An issuer has missed a payment, the DFA has been sold or redeemed at a loss, and in the same year profitable bond trades have been closed on the brokerage account. The tax on the bond profit will be withheld in full, as if the loss on the DFA did not exist.

Whether such a loss can be carried forward to later years and offset against future income from other DFA issues is, again, something this text does not claim. The general mechanism is described in the glossary entry "Loss carryforward", but whether it extends to the DFA base is decided by the current wording of Article 214.11 of the Russian Tax Code.

What the calculator will work out and what it does not know

The arithmetic of the rate scale can be reproduced in the tax calculator. The purchase price, sale price, quantity and commissions are entered by hand; choosing a security from the list is not required. The "Apply the long-term holding relief" switch is on by default, because the calculator is built for securities; for DFAs it has to be turned off. The result shows the tax base, the tax and the amount that will be left after it.

The calculator works out profit the way it is worked out for securities: the difference in prices less commissions. Whether the composition of income and expenses for DFAs matches this is determined by the article of the code, and the operator's calculation may differ. And it sees one trade, not the year as a whole: it knows nothing of your other income or of the fact that the DFA base is separate.

There are no DFA issues as such in TradeAlmanac; we cover bonds. If an issuer that borrows through DFAs has also issued bonds, it can be checked through them: in the bonds section, in the feed of defaults and technical defaults and in the corporate events calendar. The credit risk of a DFA is the same as that of a bond: it is an obligation of a specific issuer, and the tax is calculated on income that may not materialise if payment is missed. What else can go wrong here is covered in the article on the risks of DFAs.

Under what conditions the above ceases to be true

• The law is changing. Federal Law No. 282-FZ of 4 August 2026 "On Digital Currencies and Digital Rights" introduces new regulation of digital rights and replaces Law No. 259-FZ in stages. The transition is phased, so as of the date of a transaction the current wording of both the sector law and Article 214.11 of the Russian Tax Code needs to be checked.
• You are not a tax resident. The rates named apply to a resident. How the DFA income of a non-resident is taxed is something this text does not claim.
• The asset is not a DFA. A digital currency is a different object with a different tax treatment; the rules in this article do not carry over to it.

A question that the tax does not answer for the holder: when comparing a DFA with a bond of the same issuer, are you calculating the result after tax — and allowing for the fact that a loss on the DFA cannot be offset against a profit on securities?