Tax optimization through an s.r.o. (the Slovak limited liability company) is a proven route for crypto and funds: it moves you out of the individual's tax and levy bands into a corporate regime with a 10 percent tax rate. Since August 2026 this route has become more formal and, in some cases, more expensive. The new Commercial Register Act (No. 29/2026 Coll.) rewrote the rules of company formation from the ground up and draws lawyers and notaries into the process. In this article we explain what exactly changed, when the notary can still be avoided, who benefits from a trading company and what extra bureaucracy you should factor in before committing to a corporate structure.

What exactly changes from 17 August 2026

The most important change concerns the very birth of the company. In a classic formation the founding document, meaning the memorandum of association or the deed of foundation, has to take the form of a notarial deed, or be a document authorized by a lawyer (advokát). Until then it was enough to sign the document with an officially certified signature at the registry office or a notary for a few euros. That is no longer possible.

Who can represent you in filings to the Commercial Register changed too. A filing is subject to authorization and you can only be represented by a lawyer, a notary or your own employee. The various intermediary services without legal responsibility that used to form companies in bulk are out of the process. The applicants themselves, meaning the managing directors of the company being formed, can still file, provided they hold a qualified electronic signature and have an activated electronic mailbox.

A qualified form is also required for later fundamental changes in the company. A share transfer agreement has to be authorized by a lawyer or drawn up as a notarial deed. In a company with several shareholders, the course of the general meeting for decisions on managing directors, shares or registered capital has to be certified by a notarial deed, and a lawyer's authorization is not enough there. Registration itself moves from the courts to notaries, with documents prepared by one notary having to be registered by a different notary.

The law brought positives as well. It abolished the limit under which one person could be the sole shareholder of at most three s.r.o. companies, and the ban on chaining single-member companies fell too. A business name can be reserved in advance for €50 for 60 days. Online data in the Commercial Register is legally binding and the reform aims for a new company to be registered within 24 hours. And if a new company lists exclusively unregulated trades from the statutory list (Annex 4a to the Trade Licensing Act), the trade authorization arises directly upon registration in the Commercial Register, with no trade office visit at all.

The exception that needs no notary

The mandatory notarial deed or lawyer authorization does not apply to the simplified formation of an s.r.o. under Section 110a of the Commercial Code. That route survived 17 August 2026 unchanged, and the memorandum of association is created by filling in a standardized electronic form.

The conditions have to be met together: at most five shareholders, business as the purpose of the company, exclusively unregulated trades as the business activities and no more than fifteen of them, a business name containing the abbreviation "s.r.o.", cash contributions only, the managing director acting as the contribution administrator, and no supervisory board. A typical single-member company for trading crypto or securities usually meets all of them.

You fall out of this route when you want to contribute crypto or other assets in kind, when you need custom wording of the business activities, a craft or regulated trade, a supervisory board, or non-standard provisions in the memorandum. In those cases the classic route applies and the notary or lawyer is mandatory.

What it did to the price

The court fee for the first registration of an s.r.o. fell from €300 to €220 under the new law. The discount for electronic filing disappeared, and filings are electronic only anyway. As an alternative, the filing can go to a notary acting as registrar, in which case no court fee is paid and the notary's fee applies instead, set so that it broadly matches the court fee.

In a simplified formation with unregulated trades from the statutory list, that fee is essentially the entire external cost. In a classic formation the notary's fee for the deed is added on top, which available rates put in the range of roughly one to two hundred euros, or the lawyer's fee for authorization. Add time: instead of a filing with certified signatures, you will be coordinating an appointment with a legal professional, and with several shareholders often an in-person meeting of all parties at once. The same overhead repeats with every share transfer or change of managing director.

The practical conclusion is therefore less dramatic than was expected before the law took effect. Anyone forming a straightforward trading company pays roughly what they paid before. Anyone who needs something non-standard should budget for the mandatory intermediary and their fee.

Why talk about a company at all: a tax recap

Let us recall why the s.r.o. comes up with crypto and funds in the first place. An individual taxes gains from direct crypto (coins in a wallet or on an exchange) at a progressive rate of 19 to 35 percent and pays 16 percent health insurance contributions on top. Combined, that can reach up to about 51 percent. There is no time test for direct crypto, whether you hold the coins for a month or ten years.

A legal entity is a completely different world. An s.r.o. taxes realized gains at 10 percent (with taxable revenues up to €100,000 per year) and pays no health contributions at all. When profit is paid out to the owner, a 7 percent dividend tax is added. The company makes almost no distinction between direct crypto, ETFs or ETNs: everything enters the tax base the same way.

An example with numbers. An active trader with an annual profit of €30,000 from direct crypto pays, as an individual in the lowest band, 19 percent tax (€5,700) and 16 percent contributions (€4,800), a total of €10,500. The same activity in a company means 10 percent tax (€3,000) and, when the rest is paid out, 7 percent dividend tax (€1,890), a total of €4,890. The difference is €5,610 per year. And if you do not pay the profit out and reinvest it inside the company, you hand over only €3,000, an effective 10 percent.

Who benefits from optimization through an s.r.o.

The company makes sense mainly for the active trader. If you trade often, hold positions for a short time and turn over larger volumes, there is no way for an individual to escape the progression and the levies. The same goes for income from staking, mining, lending or DeFi, which lands in an individual's taxable income continuously. A company can also deduct related costs (hardware, data, fees, advisory) and let the profit keep working inside the company with just a 10 percent burden.

Conversely, a passive long-term investor usually gains nothing from a company, rather the opposite. An individual who holds an ETF or a crypto ETN admitted to trading on a regulated market for more than one year has the income from its sale exempt from both tax and levies under Section 9(1)(k) of the Income Tax Act. Zero percent cannot be beaten. A company has no time test, so it would pay 10 percent on the same gain plus the eventual dividend tax. Mind the details though: the exemption applies to a sale on a regulated market, not to redemption at maturity, and leveraged or off-market products may not qualify. Each specific product always needs an individual assessment.

Small volumes do not justify a company even with active trading. Accounting, the corporate tax return and other overhead will eat the entire saving when profits sit in the low thousands of euros. The break-even point depends on the structure of your income, but it usually starts at stable profits in the higher single-digit thousands of euros per year.

The hidden bureaucracy: corporate accounts at exchanges and brokers

The tax math is only half of the decision. The other half is operations, and here it has to be said plainly: a company has a much harder time opening accounts than an individual.

While you open a personal account at an exchange or a broker in a few minutes with an ID card and a selfie, a corporate account goes through a so-called KYB process (know your business). The exchange or broker will request an extract from the Commercial Register, the memorandum of association, the ownership structure down to the ultimate beneficial owners, identity documents of the managing directors and shareholders, and often a justification of the source of funds. Approval takes days to weeks, not minutes, and the compliance department may keep coming back with follow-up questions. Some platforms do not offer corporate accounts to small companies at all or condition them on higher minimum volumes, so the choice of exchange or broker should be verified before the company is even formed.

When trading securities through a broker, one more obligation appears: the LEI number (legal entity identifier). It is a twenty-character global identifier of a legal entity that European regulation requires for reporting trades in financial instruments. A simple rule applies, "no LEI, no trade": without a valid LEI, a broker simply will not let a company trade shares, ETFs or ETNs. An LEI is registered with an accredited issuer, costs on the order of tens of euros to issue and has to be renewed every year for another annual fee. It is not a large amount, but it is another line item and another deadline the company must not miss.

And do not forget the bank. A corporate bank account is a must, and Slovak banks are cautious with companies that have crypto activity. When opening an account they ask about the business activity and the source of funds, and transfers from exchanges can trigger additional AML questions. There are solutions, you just need to allow for the fact that a month can pass between signing the founding documents and having a fully functional company ready to trade.

How to decide

The decision boils down to three questions. First, what is your style: passive long-term holding through ETFs or ETNs wins as an individual with zero after one year, while active trading and continuous income speak for a company. Second, what is your volume: with small profits the company's overhead eats the saving, with larger ones the difference counts in thousands of euros a year. And third, what structure you need: if a straightforward company with unregulated trades and cash contributions is enough, the simplified route handles it, while a contribution in kind or a non-standard memorandum means a notary or a lawyer.

In practice the two paths are not mutually exclusive. A common and sensible combination is that the investor holds the long-term core of the portfolio as an individual through ETFs or ETNs on a regulated market and sells after a year at zero, while active trading, staking and short-term positions run inside the company at the 10 percent rate. The new law paradoxically helped here: by abolishing the limit of three single-member s.r.o. companies, it opened more room to separate different activities into standalone companies.

The new law is no reason to panic. Existing registrations are not retroactively affected in any way, and the mandatory notary or lawyer also brings higher legal certainty of the documents. What changed is mainly that the road to a company split in two: standardized and cheap for simple cases, more formal and more expensive for everything else.

This article is a general overview, not individual tax advice. Whether optimization through an s.r.o. pays off for you depends on your volume, trading style and plans for paying out profit. At kryptotax.sk companies are formed turnkey, including setting up the tax regime for crypto and funds, and for simple cases through the simplified route even after the rule change. The conditions and the price are on kryptotax.sk. 🇸🇰