Currency gains (§ 23)

If you hold dollars in your account and later convert them back at a gain, that can be a taxable currency gain — on a path of its own, separate from your securities. Foreign currency counts as an "other asset," and selling it within a year is a private disposal (§ 23 Abs. 1 Nr. 2 EStG).

Not the same drawer as your shares

Important: currency gains on cash do not run through the 25 % flat tax but through your personal tax rate, and they belong on Anlage SO — not Anlage KAP. The share's own price gain is not what this means: that already sits in your euro result, because the purchase and sale are each converted at the rate of their own day. The currency gain concerns only the dollars that sit as a balance between transactions.

The one-year line

Every dollar inflow — a conversion, sale proceeds, a dividend — starts its own one-year clock. Hold the currency for more than a year and a gain is tax-free; within the year it is taxable. The oldest dollars are used up first (FIFO).

The exemption threshold

For all private disposals in a year combined, there is a €1,000 exemption threshold (since 2024, previously €600). It is all-or-nothing: if your total gain stays below it, the gain is tax-free; if it reaches the threshold, the full amount is taxable.

Why this means work with US brokers

Interactive Brokers and Tastytrade track no such currency lots. capi.tax reconstructs your dollar inflows and outflows and converts them at the Deutsche Bundesbank rate. One point stays open: whether buying a dollar security with existing dollar cash already triggers a currency gain is not settled in law. capi.tax treats every dollar outflow as a realisation to be safe — check the treatment for your own case.

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