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Since 4 August 2026, a fact check on the debate about abolishing the one-year holding period under section 23 of the German Income Tax Act has been publicly citable. It examines fourteen recurring factual claims against the relevant primary sources: rulings of the German Federal Constitutional Court, the Federal Fiscal Court and the Dutch Hoge Raad, official Bundestag records, reports of the Bavarian Supreme Audit Office, parliamentary materials of the Republic of Austria, survey data of the European Central Bank, and the official statements of the German Federal Ministry of Finance.
The report has findings against both sides of the debate. It shows that the data cited as evidence of criminal Bitcoin use assigns the overwhelming share of the volume concerned to stablecoins rather than to Bitcoin, and that no official revenue estimate with a disclosed derivation exists. It expressly does not refute the strongest argument for the reform: equal treatment of realised gains regardless of their source.
The author is Peter Rochel, who is jointly responsible for this initiative. The conflict of interest is disclosed in the report, and every statement is tied to publicly accessible sources listed in the bibliography.
43 pages, 44 sources, licensed CC BY 4.0.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21792953
