Crypto Tax Mexico: What You Owe and How to Stay Legal
When you trade, sell, or earn cryptocurrency in Crypto Tax Mexico, the legal requirement to report gains and income to Mexico’s tax authority, the SAT. Also known as cryptocurrency taxation in Mexico, it’s not optional — the SAT started actively monitoring blockchain activity in 2023 and now cross-references exchange data with bank records. If you bought Bitcoin in 2022 and sold it for a profit in 2024, you owe taxes. Same if you got an airdrop, earned staking rewards, or swapped tokens on a decentralized exchange. The SAT doesn’t care if you used Binance, Kraken, or a DEX — they track it all.
Most people think crypto is anonymous, but that’s not true in Mexico. The SAT requires residents to declare all foreign assets, including crypto holdings, if they exceed 100,000 UDIS (about $600,000 MXN). You must report every transaction that results in a gain, even if you didn’t cash out to pesos. For example, trading ETH for SOL counts as a taxable event. The tax rate on capital gains is 30%, and if you earn crypto as income — like from a job, airdrops, or mining — it’s taxed as regular income, up to 35%. There are no deductions for losses unless you file a formal tax return with full documentation.
What makes this messy is that the SAT doesn’t provide clear guidelines on how to calculate cost basis for multiple purchases. Did you buy 0.5 BTC in January and another 0.3 BTC in June? Which one did you sell? The law doesn’t specify FIFO or LIFO, so most taxpayers use the first-in-first-out method to stay safe. Also, if you used a mixing service or cross-chain bridge, the SAT treats that as an attempt to hide income — and penalties can be steep. There’s no amnesty program. If you didn’t file last year, you can still correct it, but you’ll pay interest and fines.
There’s no official crypto tax software approved by the SAT, but many Mexicans use tools like Koinly or CryptoTaxCalculator to track transactions and generate reports in Spanish. You can submit these manually via the SAT’s online portal, but you need an e-filing signature (FIEL) to do it. If you’re not comfortable with the process, hiring a local tax advisor who understands blockchain is worth the cost — especially since the SAT has hired blockchain analysts to audit high-volume wallets.
What you’ll find in the posts below are real examples of how crypto behaves under Mexican tax law. Some cover how airdrops like FARA and CORA are treated as income. Others explain how wrapping ETH into wETH triggers a taxable event. There’s even a breakdown of how North Korean laundering schemes affect everyday users in Mexico — because if your wallet receives stolen crypto, you’re still liable for taxes on it. You’ll also see how crypto adoption in Nigeria and Argentina compares to Mexico’s situation, and why regulation here is tightening fast. This isn’t about speculation. It’s about compliance. And if you’re holding crypto in Mexico, you need to know what’s coming.
