In a few weeks, goodbye to hidden crypto accounts! A new European directive will increase the monitoring of transactions so that they no longer evade taxes.

DAC 8: automated tax reporting

The DAC 8, a new European creation of regulators, will be deployed on January 1, 2026. This requires platforms such as CEX, PSAN in France, or CASP at the European level to collect, verify, and report all transactions of their users to the competent tax authorities each year through an automatic exchange of information between member states.

Until now, platforms only transmitted this data in cases of suspected money laundering or terrorist financing, which left significant leeway for taxpayers who were lax about their reporting obligations.

DAC 8 scales up: the tax authorities will know not only about the existence of undeclared foreign accounts, but also the details of capital gains and flows made through regulated platforms in the European Union, with the stated aim of combating fraud, evasion, and certain forms of tax optimization.

In this context, forgetfulness or error will weigh much less against an administration now equipped with a standardized history of your crypto operations. In other words, if you deliberately omitted to declare part of your gains, beware of reassessment!

But, you may ask, were crypto transactions not already tracked under the MiCA law? The answer is yes… and no. While MiCA regulates the crypto market and its actors by imposing standards, DAC 8 adds a purely fiscal layer. It thus organizes the structured and automatic reporting of information to the tax authorities.

Contrary to popular belief, this does not mean that all transactions have been tracked for months: obligations focus on what passes through regulated intermediaries and gradually ramp up. In 2026, it will be the same since only centralized actors (exchanges, PSAN, crypto neobanks…) will have to comply with the rule. Purely on-chain movements between self-hosted wallets, or via certain non-custodial tools, still do not, at this stage, fall under automatic transmission.

This increased transparency, however, raises the question of data protection: the proliferation of sensitive information databases on crypto holders mechanically increases the risks of leaks, targeted attacks, and even physical security breaches, in a context where kidnappings and attempted robberies have already multiplied.

The moral of the story: in crypto, nothing is certain except death and taxes.