Slovakia's 3-year securities exemption and futures trading

General information about tax rules, not tax or legal advice. Rules change and every situation is different: check with a qualified adviser in your country before you file.

You closed the year green on MNQ, you live in Bratislava or Košice, and somebody in a Slovak trading group told you the magic sentence: hold it three years and the profit is tax free. It is probably the most repeated piece of tax folklore among Slovak retail investors. Applied to futures it is wrong in every direction at once: wrong instrument, wrong paragraph of the law, wrong number of years.

So let's take it apart. Where the three-year story comes from, what Slovak law actually exempts, and what really happens to a futures profit when you sit down with the daňové priznanie typ B. If you trade ES, NQ, MNQ, MES, CL or GC as a private individual through a Slovak or foreign broker, the paragraph that governs you is § 8 ods. 1 písm. k) of Act No. 595/2003 Z. z. on income tax, and that paragraph contains no time test at all.

Where the three-year story comes from

Nobody made it up. There are three real sources feeding the rumour, and every one of them is either dead, irrelevant to you, or foreign.

One: a transitional rule from the last century. Securities acquired between 1 January 2000 and 31 December 2003 could be sold free of tax once a three-year holding test was satisfied, under the transitional provisions in § 52 of the Income Tax Act. Slovak tax law keeps its old transitional paragraphs on the books forever, so the rule is still technically there, and it is still quoted in forum answers written fifteen years ago by people who were right at the time. Unless you were buying shares before Slovakia had the euro, it does nothing for you.

Two: a law that was passed and then killed. In 2023 an amendment wrote a three-year exemption into § 9 ods. 1 písm. r) for the sale of a stake in an s.r.o., and the same political cycle floated a three-year test for securities outside a regulated market, fund units included. The consolidation package at the end of that year scrapped it before it ever applied to a single transaction. That is why you can find Slovak articles from mid-2023 announcing a three-year exemption, and no trace of it in the current guidance of the Finančná správa.

Three: the border. A three-year test for securities is an everyday thing across the river in Czechia. Slovak and Czech traders read the same threads, watch the same videos and often use the same brokers. Advice crosses the border a lot faster than legislation does.

What Slovak law actually exempts

The exemptions live in § 9 of the Income Tax Act, and for an investor there are basically three that matter. The Finančná správa sets out the conditions in its own guidance on exempting income from the sale of securities.

• § 9 ods. 1 písm. k): the one-year test. Income from selling a security is exempt if the security was admitted to trading on a regulated market (or a comparable foreign regulated market) at the time of sale, more than one year passed between acquisition and sale, and the security was not part of your business assets. One year. Not three.
• § 9 ods. 1 písm. i): the 500 euro threshold. A small annual allowance that covers certain capital gains, including securities you sold before the year was up. It is shared with other items of other income, so it disappears fast.
• § 9 ods. 1 písm. l): long-term investment saving (DIS). Securities held inside a qualifying long-term investment savings account for at least fifteen years. A pension-horizon product, not a trading account.

Here is the map, because this is the part people mix up:

What you sold	Paragraph	Time test	Result
Share or ETF listed on a regulated market, held over a year	§ 9 ods. 1 písm. k)	1 year	Exempt
Same share or ETF, sold inside the year	§ 8 ods. 1 písm. e)	None	Taxable, 500 euro threshold may help
Securities inside a DIS account	§ 9 ods. 1 písm. l)	15 years	Exempt
Futures, options, CFDs, retail forex	§ 8 ods. 1 písm. k)	None	Taxable from the first euro

There is no row with a three in it. That is the whole point.

Why a futures contract is not a security

This is the step most traders skip. A cenný papier is defined by the Securities Act, and a futures contract is not one. It is a derivative: a contract whose value is derived from something else, settled against a clearing house, with no ownership of anything underlying until and unless it is delivered.

The Income Tax Act puts income from derivative operations in its own drawer. Section 8 lists the types of other income, and for a private individual who is not running a business, derivatives land in § 8 ods. 1 písm. k), príjmy z derivátových operácií, as the Finančná správa explains in its note on income from derivative operations.

Now look back at § 9. The exemptions there point at the transfer of securities and at the transfer of options, at specific letters of § 8 ods. 1. Letter k) is not on the list. Nothing in § 9 reaches it. The practical consequences:

• No one-year test. No three-year test. No time test of any kind.
• No 500 euro threshold. The first euro of net profit is taxable.
• It does not matter whether you scalped it in forty seconds or carried the position for two quarters.
• The same treatment applies to CFDs and to retail forex, which is why traders who moved from CFDs to real CME contracts often find nothing changed on the tax side.

Deductible against that income are the fees and similar payments connected with executing the derivative operations and the costs of settling them: broker commissions, exchange and clearing fees, the per-side costs on your statement. Note how narrow that wording is. A monthly data feed, a platform licence or a chart subscription is a grey area, and the official wording does not obviously stretch to cover it. Ask before you claim it rather than after.

What you will actually pay in 2026

Slovakia's income tax stopped being a two-rate system on 1 January 2026. The consolidation package added two brackets on top. These are the rates published by the Finančná správa for 2026:

Annual tax base	Rate
Up to 43 983,32 €	19 %
43 983,33 € to 60 349,21 €	25 %
60 349,22 € to 75 010,32 €	30 %
Above 75 010,32 €	35 %

The brackets are indexed to the subsistence minimum of 284,13 € in force from 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026, which means they will move again. They are progressive: only the part of the base above a threshold pays the higher rate. And they apply to your combined base from employment, rental and other income, so a futures profit stacks on top of your salary rather than being taxed in its own little world. For the 2025 year, the one most people filed this spring, there were only two rates, 19 % and 25 %.

Two details that catch people out. First, the personal allowance (nezdaniteľná časť základu dane) applies to active income, employment and business, not to other income under § 8. You cannot shelter a futures profit with it. Second, if futures are your only income, you still file: there is no “it was only a few hundred euros” exemption for derivatives.

The health levy on top

This is the bill that surprises people, because it does not arrive with the tax return. It arrives a year later.

Income taxed under § 7 and § 8 of the Income Tax Act enters the assessment base for health insurance. Your insurer picks it up from the tax return and settles it in the annual reconciliation of premiums (ročné zúčtovanie poistného) in the following year. The rate for a self-payer was 15 % for 2025 and rises to 16 % from 1 January 2026, as VšZP sets out for contributors. Social insurance does not touch § 8 income, so at least the Sociálna poisťovňa stays out of it.

Put the two together. Say you net 20 000 € on MNQ and MES in 2026 and you are nowhere near the higher brackets. The tax is 19 %, about 3 800 €. The health levy at 16 % is roughly another 3 200 €, invoiced in 2027 by an institution you were not thinking about when you sized your positions. Call it 7 000 € on a 20 000 € year: about thirty-five cents of every euro. The premium you actually pay can generally be treated as an expense in the year you pay it, which softens the arithmetic slightly, and is worth asking your accountant to place correctly.

The practical lesson is boring and important: when you take a withdrawal from the broker, put aside a third, and do not spend the health levy in January because the tax bill looked survivable in March.

Losses that lead nowhere

Within the year, your losing trades do net against your winning ones. The Finančná správa's own worked example makes that clear: you report gross income and gross expenses separately, not the net result, and the taxable figure is what falls out of the subtraction. If you had 6 000 € of gross proceeds and 5 400 € of costs across your derivative operations, you declare both numbers and you are taxed on 600 €.

What you cannot do is go below zero. If expenses exceed income, the difference is disregarded. Not carried forward to next year, not set against your salary, not set against a gain on shares. It simply evaporates. A trader who loses 15 000 € in 2026 and makes 15 000 € in 2027 pays full tax and full health levy on the 2027 profit and gets nothing for 2026. Over a cycle, that asymmetry costs more than the headline rate does.

Worth saying plainly while we are here: leveraged futures can lose you more than the money you deposited, and the Slovak tax system's answer to that loss is nothing. Size accordingly.

Putting it on the return

You file daňové priznanie k dani z príjmov fyzickej osoby typ B, the one with the section for other income under § 8. Derivative operations get their own row in the table of other income, with two columns: income and expenses. You fill both. You do not fill in a single net number.

The deadline is 31 March following the tax year. If you need more time, you file a notification (oznámenie) before that date and get three extra months, or six if part of your income comes from abroad. A US broker means foreign-source income, so the six-month extension is usually on the table, which matters if your broker's annual statement arrives late.

Currency is the other recurring headache. Your statement is in dollars, the return is in euros, and § 31 of the Income Tax Act allows several conversion methods (a daily reference rate, an average, a year-end rate, depending on the case). Pick one that fits your situation, apply it to the whole year, and keep the workings. Switching method between years because it produced a nicer number is exactly the kind of thing a tax inspection notices.

Keep the monthly statements, the annual summary and the fee breakdown. If you moved brokers mid-year, keep both sets. Nobody is going to reconstruct a year of MNQ scalping from a bank statement.

The short version

• The three-year exemption people quote is either a transitional rule for securities bought before 2004, or a 2023 law that was repealed before it applied. Neither helps a futures trader.
• The live time test for listed securities is one year, under § 9 ods. 1 písm. k).
• Futures are derivative operations under § 8 ods. 1 písm. k). No time test, no 500 euro threshold, taxable from the first euro.
• 2026 rates: 19 %, 25 %, 30 %, 35 %, stacked on your other income.
• Health levy of 16 % from 2026, billed by your insurer the following year.
• A losing year gives you nothing to carry forward.

This article is general information about how Slovak rules work, not tax or legal advice, and it is written from the sources current in 2026. Tax law here changes at least once a year, and the answer for your situation depends on your residence, your contracts and your broker. Before you file, put your own numbers in front of a Slovak tax adviser or ask the Finančná správa directly.

slovakia 3 year exemption securities

Educational content, not investment advice. Trading futures involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for every investor. Any reference to Algomyth results is hypothetical, simulated over historical data, and shown in full on the performance page; past performance does not guarantee future results.