Anlage KAP, KAP-INV & SO

With an account at Interactive Brokers, Tastytrade or DEGIRO, almost all of your capital income goes into line 19 of Anlage KAP, with share gains and losses repeated in lines 20 and 23, the remaining losses in line 22 and the creditable withholding tax in line 41. Funds and ETFs do not belong there; they go on Anlage KAP-INV. For the tax years 2021 to 2024, options also use lines 21 and 24. Dividends of German shares with German tax withheld go on no line – see Dividends of German shares.

Why the effort: a German broker withholds the tax, which generally settles it. Interactive Brokers, Tastytrade and DEGIRO do not. Because no German tax was withheld, you have to declare this income yourself (§ 32d Abs. 3 EStG).

Which form for which income?

If you only hold funds, line 19 stays at €0.00 — you still file Anlage KAP, because the request for the Günstigerprüfung (lower personal rate), church tax and the withholding tax credit live there. If you are assessed jointly, each person files their own Anlage KAP for their own accounts; income from a joint account is usually attributed half to each.

Which lines of Anlage KAP stay empty?

Anlage KAP has two blocks for income: one for income that was subject to German withholding (lines 7 to 17), and one for income without German withholding (from line 18). With a pure foreign-broker account the income lines of the first block usually stay empty – the exception is dividends of German shares that you declare in line 7 for the Günstigerprüfung or church tax (see Dividends of German shares). Line 18 (domestic capital income) is usually 0; whether income is domestic depends on the payer, though, not the broker (§ 34d Nr. 6 EStG). capi.tax enters gains, coupons and accrued interest of bonds from German issuers in line 18 — see Bonds and accrued interest. Dividends of German shares are usually already settled by German Kapitalertragsteuer and go on no line; only without German tax deducted does capi.tax put them in line 18 – see Dividends of German shares.

You do not deduct the Sparer-Pauschbetrag (§ 20 Abs. 9 EStG; from 2023 €1,000, €2,000 when assessed jointly; for 2021 and 2022 €801 and €1,602) from your income yourself. If a German bank has already used some or all of it through an exemption order (Freistellungsauftrag), you enter the amount used as the official instructions describe — in line 16 if you also declare income with German withholding in lines 7 ff., otherwise in line 17. The tax office applies the rest. If one spouse does not use their share when assessed jointly, it passes to the other (§ 20 Abs. 9 S. 3 EStG).

Anlage KAP 2025: which line for which amount?

The 2024 Annual Tax Act (JStG 2024) abolished the separate pot for forward transactions (§ 20 Abs. 6 S. 5 EStG old version), and with it the dedicated option lines. This is how capi.tax maps your figures for tax year 2025:

• Line 19 — foreign capital income: the total of all income without German withholding. It is made up of interest, gross dividends (before withholding tax), the net result from options and futures, the net result from share sales, and the net result from selling and redeeming bonds. Fund income is not part of it.
• Line 20 — of which gains from selling shares: only the gains from share sales. They are already contained in line 19.
• Line 22 — of which losses other than share losses: all losses from options and futures, including written options (Stillhalter trades), and losses from bonds — see bonds.
• Line 23 — of which losses from selling shares: all losses from share sales, as a positive amount.
• Line 41 — creditable foreign taxes not yet credited: the withholding tax you may credit under the tax treaty, which is not necessarily the amount withheld (§ 32d Abs. 5 EStG). More under withholding tax.

"Of which" is the key: line 19 is a net figure of all income, gains and losses. Lines 20, 22 and 23, by contrast, are its un-netted components — gains and losses kept apart, not additional amounts. The tax office needs them separately because share losses may only be offset against share gains (§ 20 Abs. 6 S. 4 EStG). If line 20 exceeds lines 18 and 19 combined, ELSTER may reject the form as implausible — one more reason capi.tax counts share gains in line 19.

Anlage KAP 2021 to 2024: the option lines

For the tax years 2021 to 2024 the form has two extra lines for forward transactions. Lines 19, 20, 23 and 41 work as above, but options are split differently:

• Line 21 — writer premiums and gains from forward transactions: all gains from options and futures. They are also contained in line 19.
• Line 22 — losses other than share and forward-transaction losses: for a foreign-broker account, mainly the loss on a written option you bought back at a higher price, and losses from bonds. A Stillhalter trade is not a forward transaction (BMF letter of 19.05.2022, BStBl I 2022, 742, since replaced by the BMF letter of 14.05.2025), so it does not go in line 24.
• Line 24 — losses from forward transactions: losses from bought options and futures. Per the official instructions they go exclusively here — so not into line 19, unlike every other loss.

capi.tax does not apply the €20,000 cap on forward-transaction losses for these years either: the JStG 2024 repealed it for all cases still open. Details under loss offsetting.

⚠️ One gap: if a cash-settled option you wrote (an index option, say) is assigned in the money, the cash settlement is a forward-transaction loss for line 24 in 2021 to 2024. capi.tax cannot tell it apart from a buy-to-close and books it in line 22. If you had such a case, check the mapping.

Worked example: the same trades in 2024 and 2025

Suppose your year at a US broker looks like this (all values already converted to euros, example figures):

• Interest: €120.00
• Gross dividends: €800.00, of which €120.00 US withholding tax (15 %)
• Share sales: gains €3,000.00, losses €1,200.00
• Written options: gains €2,500.00, one loss of €400.00
• Bought options: one loss of €700.00

How line 19 comes about:

• 2024: 120 + 800 + (3,000 − 1,200) + (2,500 − 400) = €4,820.00. The loss on the bought option (€700) appears only in line 24.
• 2025: 120 + 800 + (3,000 − 1,200) + (2,500 − 400 − 700) = €4,120.00. Both option losses also appear in line 22: 400 + 700 = €1,100.00.

Anlage KAP-INV: funds and ETFs

Income from investment funds without German withholding goes on Anlage KAP-INV — including many US ETFs, which are generally investment funds under the InvStG. The line tells the tax office the fund type, and from that it deducts the partial exemption itself. That is why you enter gross amounts. If you entered a €1,000 equity-fund gain already reduced to €700, the tax office would take another 30 % off and tax only €490.

The sale lines hold one net figure of gains and losses per fund type. ⚠️ capi.tax does not model legacy units bought before 01.01.2018. They are deemed newly acquired on 01.01.2018 at the redemption price of 31.12.2017 (§ 56 Abs. 2 S. 2, Abs. 3 InvStG). On a sale, the notional gain up to the end of 2017 goes in a line of its own (line 16 for equity funds); units bought before 2009 also get a €100,000 allowance (line 15 for equity funds). capi.tax uses the actual purchase cost instead — for such units the figure in the sale line is then wrong, and you have to work it out yourself. A year's Vorabpauschale belongs on the return for the following year — see Vorabpauschale.

The broker data does not say which fund type applies. You set it in capi.tax under Adjustments in the symbol classification. ⚠️ Without it, capi.tax falls back to treating the fund like a share, and its income lands on Anlage KAP instead of KAP-INV. That is not an equivalent substitute but an error state: the partial exemption is lost, losses wrongly land in the share-loss pot (a fund is not a share under § 20 Abs. 6 S. 4 EStG), and any Vorabpauschale is missing. Classify every fund before you copy figures over.

When do you need Anlage SO?

Shares, options and funds never go on Anlage SO. It covers private disposals of other assets (§ 23 EStG) — with a foreign broker, mainly two cases:

• Non-interest-bearing foreign-currency balances: dollars you hold in the account and convert at a gain into euros or another currency within a year. For an interest-bearing balance, the tax authorities instead treat the result as capital income on Anlage KAP; that view is disputed. See currency gains.
• Crypto you hold directly and sell within a year.

A €1,000 exemption threshold (from 2024, €600 before) applies to all private disposals of the year combined (§ 23 Abs. 3 S. 5 EStG). It is all-or-nothing: a gain of €999.99 stays entirely tax-free; from €1,000 the full amount is taxable.

capi.tax does not fill in Anlage SO, nor does it yet include currency gains in the Anlage KAP lines. For Interactive Brokers capi.tax calculates them and shows them on the KAP Form tab in the “Currency gains” section; transfer the amounts yourself. For Tastytrade currency gains are not calculated, and crypto trades in a Tastytrade export are skipped; you get a processing notice about it. You have to do that calculation yourself.

Where do you find the figures in capi.tax?

In your results, open the KAP Form tab. It lists the amount per line for the tax year you selected, with the Anlage KAP-INV section below. Every figure can be traced back to the row in your broker export through the audit trail, see export. capi.tax does not offer tax years before 2021, because their line numbers are not verified.

Related questions

• Do I pay tax on line 20 on top of line 19?
• Do I enter dividends gross or net?
• Do these line numbers apply to later years too?

Upload your broker export and see your figures per line.

See also: How these figures are derived and checked: Method & sources.

Last updated: October 12, 2026