What we need from you
Some things no tool can derive from a broker export — they simply are not in it. In those cases capi.tax deliberately does not guess; it asks you. This page shows where your input is needed and why it changes the result.
The rule behind it: better a visible prompt than a quiet assumption inside a tax figure. Everything you add on the Adjustments tab is recorded as its own traceable entry with a reason and listed under Active adjustments. Before you commit, a preview shows how the change affects the figures.
Setting the fund type
Whether a fund counts as an equity, mixed or property fund decides the Teilfreistellung — the share of your fund income that stays tax-free from the outset (30 %, 15 %, 60 % or 80 %). That German classification appears in no broker export: Interactive Brokers, Tastytrade and DEGIRO do not know it.
So you assign the affected securities to a category yourself under Adjustments → Symbol classification — stock, equity fund/ETF, mixed fund, real-estate fund, foreign real-estate fund or other investment fund (a bond ETF, say, 0 %). What counts is the fund's prospectus (Anlagebedingungen), not its composition on a single day. What happens without your input:
- Well-known US ETFs are pre-assigned from a fixed symbol list: just under 40 large equity index ETFs (such as
SPY,QQQ,VTI) as equity funds at 30 %, bond and commodity ETFs (such asTLT,GLD) as other funds at 0 %. Check this in Symbol classification — it is a default, not a review of the fund's terms. For gold and commodity trusts such asGLDthe tax classification is not settled; commodity partnerships such asUSOare not investment funds. - ⚠️ Every other fund is currently booked as a share. Legally, a fund without a proven fund kind is an other investment fund (0 % Teilfreistellung) and belongs on Anlage KAP-INV. As a share it lands on the wrong form (Anlage KAP lines 20/23 instead of KAP-INV) and in the share-loss pot, and a loss is overstated without the Teilfreistellung. So set the fund kind. With Interactive Brokers, capi.tax usually recognises a fund from its ISIN or name and shows a processing notice. ⚠️ The Tastytrade export carries neither ISIN nor security type, so there is no notice. Assign your funds yourself.
More on the rates and fund kinds in Funds & Teilfreistellung.
Adding a missing opening trade
If you sell something in 2025 that you bought in 2024, the sale needs its counterpart. The simplest way is to upload the files from 2024 on as well – see Upload earlier years. If capi.tax cannot take the holdings from it (or you don't have the file), FIFO cannot assign a cost – the trade stays unmatched in the audit trail and is not counted in the totals.
The way out: add the missing Opening position yourself — symbol, date, quantity, cost in the original currency, long or short, and a reason. Under Unmatched transactions, Resolve prefills the form. After that capi.tax includes the trade normally. You find the details on the purchase confirmation or in the prior year's export.
A written option from a prior year (short opening). You don't need an opening position for this. capi.tax assigns the premium of a written option that is still open at year end to the year you wrote it. A buyback in the following year counts as negative income in the year of payment (§ 20 Abs. 1 Nr. 11 EStG as amended by the JStG 2024). If the option expires or you are assigned, the option itself creates nothing in the following year; assigned shares have the strike as their acquisition cost. ⚠️ If you added such an opening position with amount 0 earlier, delete it: the result stays the same, but the form does not flag it as a Stillhalter trade – for 2021 to 2024 a buyback loss would otherwise land in line 24 instead of line 22.
Adding an individual lot
Similar but more general: if a holding came from a transfer from another broker, capi.tax knows neither its purchase date nor its cost basis. You can add both via Add purchase — the acquisition date matters especially, because it drives the FIFO order. ⚠️ Holdings bought before 2009 are unknown to capi.tax: shares bought before 2009 are tax-free on sale (§ 52 Abs. 28 S. 11 EStG); for fund units bought before 2009 only the gains since 1 January 2018 are taxable, with a €100,000 allowance (§ 56 Abs. 6 S. 1 Nr. 2 InvStG). If you enter such purchases as a position, FIFO sells them first and capi.tax taxes their gain in full. So don't enter them without taking the tax-free gains out yourself.
Vorabpauschale
A year's Vorabpauschale is deemed received on the first working day of the following year (§ 18 Abs. 3 InvStG). For the 2025 return you therefore need the figures of the prior year 2024: your fund's redemption prices at the start and end of that year, your holding on 31 Dec, the distributions per unit in that year and, for purchases during the year, the purchase month. Broker data does not carry the prices; they come from the fund company. You enter them under Adjustments → Record Vorabpauschale, and capi.tax calculates the Vorabpauschale from them under § 18 InvStG. See Vorabpauschale for how.
What capi.tax cannot do for you
A few things stay outside the tool on purpose:
- Return of contributed capital. Whether a "return of capital" payment qualifies as an Einlagenrückgewähr cannot be decided automatically. The determination procedure at the Federal Central Tax Office (§ 27 Abs. 8 KStG) exists only for companies from the EU and EEA, and the company files it. For a US company you have to prove the Einlagenrückgewähr in your own assessment; that rarely succeeds — a case for a tax advisor.
- Your allowance and personal situation. The Sparer-Pauschbetrag, the Günstigerprüfung or church tax depend on you, not on your portfolio. That is why capi.tax shows the taxable base rather than your finished tax bill.
Why this is a good thing
Each of these is a point where an automated tool could guess — and where a wrong guess travels silently into a number you report to the tax office. Where capi.tax can detect the gap, it makes it visible instead and leaves the decision to you, with a reason that still makes sense later. Where it cannot — funds in a Tastytrade export, for instance — checking the symbol classification is up to you.