Anyone who invests faces three questions every year: what is actually taxed, how much it comes to, and whether a tax return has to be filed. The answer is different for shares than for crypto-assets, and different for dividends than for a sale. We have gone through the Income Tax Act, the Health Insurance Act, the double taxation treaties and the answers of the Financial Administration, and for every statement we leave the wording it is based on. At the end there are tips on how to reduce your tax legally.
The law does not know the word “investor”. It divides income according to how it arose. A gain from the sale of shares, ETFs, options, derivatives and crypto-assets belongs to other income under Section 8. Interest, returns on securities and the money from redeeming unit certificates are income from capital assets under Section 7, at a rate of 19 %. Dividends have their own special tax base, at a rate of 7 %.
The difference lies in what the gain is added to. Other income under Section 8 is added to your salary and taxed together with it: 19 % up to a tax base of 43,983.32 €, then 25 %, 30 % and from 75,010.32 € 35 %. If you have a high salary, you tax a gain from a short-term trade at a higher rate than someone with a low income. Income under Section 7 and dividends are not added to your salary; they have their own fixed rate.
The second layer, the one that gets forgotten, is health insurance contributions. Health insurance is paid on the tax base from other income under Section 8 and from selected income under Section 7. In 2026 and 2027 the rate is 16 %, in 2025 it was 15 %. No contributions are paid on income exempt from tax, on income taxed by withholding or on dividends from profits from 2017 onwards. The health insurance company assesses them in the annual settlement in the same year in which you file your return, by 30 September; for a gain from 2026 therefore in 2027.
| Income | Tax | Health insurance contributions | Where it is stated |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sale of shares and ETFs from a regulated market after more than a year | 0 % | 0 % | not stated in the return |
| Sale of shares and ETFs within one year | 19 to 35 % of the gain above 500 € | 16 % | tax return type B, Section 8 |
| Options, CFDs, futures and other derivatives | 19 to 35 % (500 € only for options, no holding test) | 16 % | tax return type B, Section 8 |
| Crypto-assets, including an exchange for another crypto-asset | 19 to 35 % of the whole gain | 16 % | tax return type B, Section 8 |
| Dividends from a Slovak company | 7 % by withholding (10 % on profit for 2024) | 0 % | not stated in the return |
| Dividends from abroad | 7 % (35 % from a non-cooperating state), the foreign tax is credited | 0 % | tax return type B, Annex No. 2 |
| Payouts from distributing ETFs | 19 % (interpretation of the Financial Administration) | 0 % | tax return type B, Section 7 |
| Redemption of unit certificates: a Slovak fund / a foreign fund | 19 % by withholding / 19 % in the return | 0 % | not stated / tax return type B, Section 7 |
| Returns on government bonds | 13 % | 0 % | tax return type B, Section 51ea |
| Government bonds for citizens (a special issue under Section 19a of the Bonds Act) | 0 % | 0 % | not stated in the return |
This is the most important rule for anyone who invests for the long term. Income from the sale of securities admitted to trading on a regulated market or on a comparable foreign regulated market is exempt from tax if more than a year has elapsed between the purchase and the sale and at the same time more than a year has elapsed since the security was admitted to the market. The Financial Administration derives three conditions from this: the security is on a regulated market, you owned it for more than a year, and it was not in your business assets.
The word “exceeds” means that the year must really have elapsed. If you buy in March and sell in June, you pay tax. The safe course is to sell no earlier than the day after the anniversary of the purchase. Watch out for newly listed instruments: if a share or an ETF was admitted to the exchange only a few months ago, the exemption does not apply, even if you owned it for years.
What a regulated market is. The act refers to the definition in the Stock Exchange Act; in the European Union regulated markets are entered in the ESMA register, which includes Xetra, Euronext and the Bratislava stock exchange. The act does not name the American exchanges NYSE and Nasdaq; they are assessed as a “comparable foreign regulated market”. Not every venue where trading takes place is a regulated market within the meaning of the act; with smaller markets and with crypto-asset products, check this before you rely on the exemption.
An ETF is a security traded on an exchange, so for an ETF on a regulated market the same one-year test applies as for shares. In 2021 the Financial Administration published an opinion that some ETFs do not meet the conditions; after criticism it withdrew it and the Ministry of Finance stated that the way ETFs are taxed remains unchanged. The law has not changed on this point since then.
Exempt income is entirely outside the scope of tax. It is not stated in the return and no health insurance contributions are paid on it either. If you have only a salary and sales after a year, you do not have to file a return because of your investments.
If you sell sooner than after a year, you tax the gain, not the whole proceeds. The tax base is the income from the sale reduced by the demonstrable expenses. The expense is the purchase price paid, the broker's fees on both the purchase and the sale, and for inherited or gifted securities their price at the time of acquisition.
Gains and losses from sales in one year are added together. If you sold one share at a gain and another at a loss, only the resulting difference goes into the tax base. An overall loss for the year, however, is not carried anywhere; it reduces neither your salary nor next year's gain. And a loss on securities held for longer than a year cannot be used at all, because their sale is outside the scope of tax.
Then comes the 500 € exemption. If the sum of gains from the sale of securities, options and shares in an s. r. o., after deducting expenses, is up to 500 €, it is exempt; above 500 € only the difference is taxed. That 500 € is shared with rental income and with occasional income; in total at most 500 € can be exempted.
The rate depends on your total tax base, because the gain is added to your salary or your trade income. With a tax base up to 43,983.32 € it is 19 %, above that 25 %, above 60,349.21 € 30 % and above 75,010.32 € 35 %. On top of the tax comes health insurance of 16 % on the same base. The contributions paid are then a tax expense: according to the answer of the Financial Administration, either in the year in which you paid them, if you have such income in that year too, or through a supplementary return for the year to which they relate.
Options and derivatives have a stricter regime. The one-year holding test does not apply to them, even if you held them for years. The 500 € exemption applies to options, but not to CFDs, futures and other derivatives; there the expenses are the fees and the settlement costs. Each type of income is counted separately: a loss on CFDs does not reduce a gain on shares, and the other way round. Health insurance contributions of 16 % are payable just the same.
With a Slovak company it is simple. The company withholds the tax on payment and that settles it; you do not put the dividend in your return. The withholding is 7 %, only on profit for 2024 is it 10 %; what matters is the year for which the profit was reported, not the year of payment.
With a foreign share you declare the tax yourself. Dividends from abroad form part of the special tax base in the return, at a rate of 7 %. From countries not on the Ministry of Finance list the rate is 35 %. The rate is tied to the year for which the profit was reported: on profits for 2024 it is 10 %, for the years 2017 to 2023 and from 2025 it is 7 %.
You do not pay tax withheld abroad twice. The foreign tax is credited, but only up to the amount the treaty allows and only up to the amount of the Slovak tax on the same income. For American, German and Czech shares the treaty rate is 15 %, for Irish and Dutch ones 10 %. In practice this means: 15 % is withheld from an American dividend, the Slovak tax would be 7 %, you will pay nothing extra, but nobody will refund you the difference of 8 %. Without form W-8BEN at your broker the Americans withhold 30 % instead of 15 % and that difference is not credited in Slovakia either.
Foreign dividends belong in the return whenever you file one, and an employee with dividends files one almost always. If you have a salary and alongside it even a few euros of foreign dividends, you exceed the 2,983.37 € threshold and no longer have income from employment alone, so your employer cannot carry out the annual settlement for you and you state the dividends in tax return type B in Annex No. 2. If all your taxable income for the year, including dividends, is below that threshold, you do not have to file a return. No health insurance contributions are paid on dividends.
On the redemption of unit certificates the management company withholds 19 % of the gain, no contributions are paid and you put nothing in your return. There is no one-year test here; tax applies even after ten years.
You tax the gain from redeeming unit certificates of a foreign fund yourself in your return at a rate of 19 %, and no health insurance contributions are paid on it.
Interest on Slovak corporate bonds is withheld by the payer at 19 %, interest on foreign ones you declare yourself at 19 %, returns on government bonds are taxed at 13 % in the return, and only the special government bonds for citizens issued under Section 19a of the Bonds Act are free of tax, not ordinary government bonds bought on the exchange. Selling a bond before maturity is a sale of a security under Section 8, with the one-year test, if the bond is on a regulated market.
You sell an ETF on the exchange to another investor, so it is a sale of a security under Section 8, with the one-year test and the 500 € exemption. A unit certificate is returned to the fund manager, so it falls under Section 7, with no holding test.
Since 2025 the law no longer speaks of virtual currency, but of a crypto-asset. A crypto-asset is a digital representation of a value or of a right that can be transferred and stored using a blockchain or similar technology, that is, bitcoin, ether, stablecoins and tokens. The gain on their sale is other income under Section 8.
The biggest surprise is usually just how much counts as a sale. A sale is not only an exchange for euros, but also an exchange for another crypto-asset, for goods or for a service. Moving bitcoin into a stablecoin is a taxable exchange, even though you never had euros in your hand. If you pay for a car with bitcoin, you tax the difference between the value of the bitcoin on the day of payment and its purchase price. The value on an exchange is the market price on the day of the exchange from a public market of your choosing.
Expenses depend on how you acquired the crypto-asset. On a purchase it is the price paid, for a crypto-asset obtained by exchange its market value on the day of the exchange, and for mining the actual costs, for example electricity. With inherited or gifted crypto-assets you cannot, according to the Financial Administration, claim their value on acquisition, only the notarial fees; with inherited shares the value from the inheritance is an expense. That is the difference that surprises people most.
Mining, staking and airdrops. A mined crypto-asset is not taxed when it is mined, but only when you sell or exchange it. The law does not expressly address staking and airdrops; the safest course is to proceed as with mining, that is, to tax them on sale and to claim as an expense only what you actually paid.
The reliefs you are used to with shares do not exist here. Crypto-assets have neither the 500 € exemption nor the one-year holding test. The whole gain is taxed at 19 to 35 % according to your total tax base, and on top of that 16 % health insurance is payable. Profitable and loss-making crypto-asset trades are added together within the year, but an overall loss is not carried forward and does not reduce a gain on shares either.
Counting on nobody knowing about your crypto account is ceasing to work. From 2026 crypto-asset service providers report data about their clients and their trades to the Financial Administration, which exchanges it with other states; for the first time for 2026.
Investment income is declared in tax return type B. The obligation arises if all your taxable income for 2026 exceeds 2,983.37 €; tax of up to 17 € is not assessed and not paid, provided you do not claim the tax bonus. Your salary counts towards that amount too, so an employee with any taxable gain from investments files a return. The deadline for 2026 is 31 March 2027; by notification it is extended by three months, and for income from abroad, which includes foreign dividends, by as much as six.
Where things belong. A gain from a sale within one year and from crypto-assets goes into the part for other income, returns from ETFs and funds into the part for capital assets, and foreign dividends into Annex No. 2. You convert trades in dollars at the ECB rate: the daily rate, the monthly average or the annual average, and expenses in the same way.
Keep your documents for years ahead. You must be able to prove the expense, otherwise the whole income from the sale is taxed. For shares an annual statement from the broker is enough; for crypto-assets, export the history from every exchange and wallet straight away, while the account still exists. The health insurance company takes the data from your return itself, carries out the annual settlement by 30 September 2027 and the underpayment is due within 45 days of the statement becoming final. You need to allow for this amount when planning; it arrives a full year after the gain.
Everything below follows directly from the law. These are not tricks, but a question of when and what you sell.
With shares and ETFs on a regulated market, the difference between selling the day before the anniversary and the day after it is the whole tax and the contributions too. Before selling, check the purchase date of every single lot; when you buy gradually, each tranche has its own anniversary.
Distributing ETFs send you a payout every year, which under the interpretation of the Financial Administration you tax at 19 %; accumulating ones leave it in the fund, and if the ETF is on a regulated market, after a year and a day you sell the whole holding free of tax. The same index, a different tax.
The 500 € exemption is counted for each year separately and any unused part lapses. If you need to sell at a gain of 900 € within one year, split the sale between December and January and pay no tax at all. Be careful: a repurchase starts the one-year test again.
If you have a taxable gain from a short-term sale in a given year, sell a loss-making position held for less than a year in that same year. A loss on a position held for longer than a year will not help you for tax purposes; sell that one on investment grounds, not tax grounds.
A gain from a sale within one year and from crypto-assets that belongs to undivided co-ownership is split by the spouses in half or in another agreed proportion. Each of them then taxes their own part in their own band and, in the case of securities, also claims their own 500 €; with crypto-assets there is no 500 € exemption even after the split. Where one income is high and the other low, this saves a great deal.
Anyone who sets up long-term investment savings with a securities dealer for 15 years and deposits at most 6,000 € a year has even sales within one year exempt and, under the Income Tax Act, options and derivatives as well, if they form part of that portfolio. It suits more active strategies, where the one-year test would not help; the Securities Act today lays down only two conditions, the length of the savings and the annual limit on deposits.
Every exchange of one coin for another is a taxable event, so it pays to hold and not to jump between tokens; plan a larger sale for a year in which your other income is lower, so that you stay in the 19 % band. Sell loss-making positions in the same year as the profitable ones.
Health insurance on investment gains, which you pay a year after the gain, is deducted as an expense and so reduces your tax by 19 to 35 % of the contribution, depending on the band in which your tax is calculated. Most people forget about this; with larger amounts it runs to hundreds of euros.
Fill in form W-8BEN with your broker, otherwise 30 % instead of 15 % will be withheld from your US dividends and the difference will not be credited in Slovakia. Then state the tax withheld in your return; at 15 % you no longer pay anything extra at home.
A sole trader should not place investments in business assets; they would lose both the one-year test and the 500 €. And do not send crypto-assets as a gift: on sale the recipient will tax the whole amount, because they cannot claim the purchase price. Shares are gifted together with their value on the day of the gift, crypto-assets without it.
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