German tax law

If you trade through a US broker, your gains and income still belong on a German tax return. German law treats most of what comes out of an investment account as capital income (Einkünfte aus Kapitalvermögen, § 20 EStG), and it has a fairly simple shape once you see the parts. capi.tax sorts your transactions into these parts and applies the rules that were in force for the tax year you picked.

The main categories

Not everything is taxed the same way. Your account activity falls into a few buckets:

• Aktien — gains from buying and selling individual shares.
• Termingeschäfte — derivatives such as options and futures.
• Dividenden — dividends paid into your account.
• Zinsen — interest, for example on idle cash.
• Investmentfonds — funds and ETFs. Here a slice of the income is left untaxed up front: the Teilfreistellung. Equity funds get 30 % exempt, mixed funds 15 %, property funds 60 %, foreign property funds 80 %, other funds 0 %. The rest is taxed normally — on a form of its own, Anlage KAP-INV.

The flat tax (Abgeltungsteuer)

Capital income is not added to your salary and taxed at your personal rate. Instead it has its own flat rate of 25 % (§ 32d EStG). On top of that comes the Solidaritätszuschlag (about 1.4 % effectively), and church tax if you pay it. All in, that lands around 26.4 % without church tax, a little under 28 % with it.

What stays tax-free

Everyone has a yearly allowance, the Sparer-Pauschbetrag: 1.000 € if you file alone, 2.000 € for a married couple. The first euros of capital income up to that amount are not taxed. Note that the Finanzamt applies this allowance across all your accounts, so capi.tax shows your figures and leaves the allowance to the tax office.

Offsetting losses (Verlustverrechnung)

Losses reduce your taxable gains, but not across every boundary. Share sales have their own rule: losses from selling individual shares can only be set against gains from share sales (§ 20 Abs. 6 S. 4 EStG). The former separate bucket for Termingeschäfte, with its €20,000 cap, was removed retroactively by the 2024 Annual Tax Act, so those losses can again be offset against your other capital income. capi.tax keeps the pools separate for you, exactly as each year's rules require.

capi.tax prepares your data and is not tax advice. Please review the figures and ask a tax advisor (Steuerberater) about your personal situation.