The study outlines a fiscal map marked by “profound regulatory differences.”
The firm identified different levels of fiscal risk for taxpayers and operators in the sector.
The bitcoin (BTC) ecosystem and digital assets have ceased to be a peripheral phenomenon and have become fully integrated into the tax structures of Ibero-America.
According to a recent technical report presented by the legal firm ECIJA, The region is going through a phase of progressive formalization. The document stated that “the taxation of cryptocurrencies is already a structural part of the fiscal systems” of the region and stressed that the global trend is not aimed at creating new taxes, but rather at ensuring that existing frameworks are applied to the decentralized digital environment.
The investigation detailed that the predominant legal classification for digital currencies in Spanish-speaking countries – with the exception of El Salvador with bitcoin until January 2025 – is that of intangible good or intangible asset, and not legal tender.
This distinction is fundamental, since purchase and exchange operations immediately generate a capital gain or loss subject to taxation, even when the user does not convert their funds to fiat money. “Which generates fiscal impacts that may not be intuitive,” the report indicated.
Specifically, the report analyzed the cases from Spain, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador, Puerto Rico, Uruguay and Mexico.
The study determined that the differences between countries do not lie so much in the existence or not of taxation, but in the degree of regulatory clarity, in the intensity of formal obligations and in the oversight capacity of each tax administration.
“The observed regulatory evolution suggests that, in the coming years, the focus will be on the standardization of criteria, the automatic exchange of information and the consolidation of regulatory frameworks that definitively integrate digital assets into the global tax system,” the research noted.
Regulatory maturity levels and the impact on the investor
The fiscal map drawn by the Spanish firm’s report shows a significant disparity in the clarity of the rules of the game. Countries such as Spain, Brazil, Chile and Argentina lead the region with consolidated regulatory frameworks, according to ECIJA findings.
The report highlights that “in these systems there is greater predictability regarding the taxation of complex operations such as staking or mining.”
In contrast, nations like Guatemala, Peru and Ecuador present an incipient regulatory developmentwhere taxation depends on analogical interpretations, which increases the fiscal risk for operators in the sector. According to ECIJA, “this disparity generates different levels of fiscal risk for taxpayers and operators in the sector.”
One of the points of greatest focus for inspection is obtaining rewards through protocols. The study notes that “staking rewards are often classified as returns on capital or ordinary income, depending on the degree of organization and regularity.”
This shows that for the authorities “the technological nature of the operation does not determine its tax treatment in itself; the determining factor is the legal structure that each tax system projects on it,” ECIJA points out in its research.
Despite the depth of the ECIJA study, the omission of Venezuela is striking. The Caribbean country has one of the first technical regulations for the taxation of most detailed cryptocurrencies in the region.
The Federation of Public Accountants of Venezuela established the VEN-NIF 12 standard in 2020, which dictates strict rules for the accounting record of digital assets under “own possession.”
This framework allows entities to reflect the true market value of bitcoin on their balance sheets, functioning as a heritage protection mechanism against the devaluation of the local currency. Furthermore, in Venezuela the declaration of cryptocurrencies is established, more specifically the income obtained from the sale of bitcoin and other digital assets, through the Income Tax (ISLR), as reported by CriptoNoticias.
The ECIJA report concludes that Ibero-America is in an irreversible regulatory transition. The document ends by ensuring that “the main challenge does not lie in the creation of new taxes, but in the correct interpretation and application of existing ones, guaranteeing legal certainty without discouraging technological innovation.”