On January 11, 2018, the Tax Office of the Canton of Zurich published a technical note on the tax treatment of cryptocurrencies.
Accordingly, balances in crypto-currencies are subject to wealth tax and must be declared as "other balances" in the securities and credit register. The FTA publishes an end-of-year tax rate for Bitcoin. Other crypto-currencies are to be declared at the year-end price of the most common stock exchange platform for this currency.
In principle, capital gains from movable private assets are tax-free and capital losses are not taxable. For the distinction from private asset management, the practice of professional securities trading (STS No. 36) is applied analogously. The mining of crypto-currencies may qualify as taxable income from self-employment.
It should be noted that the Practice Directions only apply to Bitcoin and to cryptocurrencies comparable to Bitcoin.
The technical release is available here.
