Capital Gains Tax
Germany Capital Gains Tax Calculator 2026
Select what you sold. Stocks, funds, crypto and other private assets are taxed under genuinely different rules, and this calculator applies the one that actually fits your transaction.
What this calculator does differently
Most “capital gains tax Germany” tools apply one flat 25% to every input. In reality, German law taxes a stock sale, a fund sale and a crypto sale under different sections of the tax code, with different allowances, different holding-period rules, and in some cases no tax at all.
This calculator asks what you actually sold first, then requests only the information that specific sale needs, and shows you which legal basis applies to your result.
It is built for private individuals selling personal investments, not for business assets, professional trading, or shareholdings of 1% or more, which follow different rules entirely.
Your transaction
This calculator has tax rates and thresholds for 2025 and 2026 only, so the sale date must fall within one of those years.
On this page
What this calculator decides before calculating tax
Before this calculator runs a single number, it has to answer a question most “capital gains tax” tools skip entirely: what kind of tax event is this? German law does not have one capital gains tax. It has several, and which one applies depends on what you sold, how long you held it, and a handful of facts about you as the seller.
A share sale is normally taxed under Section 20 EStG at a flat 25% (the Abgeltungsteuer), regardless of how long you held it. Dividends and interest fall under that same flat-rate Section 20 regime too, but this calculator does not compute them: it estimates the tax on selling something you own, not on the ongoing income it pays out along the way. A cryptocurrency sale is normally taxed under Section 23 EStG at your personal income tax rate, but only if you sold within one year of buying, and not at all if you held longer. An ETF sale sits inside the flat-rate system like a share sale, but with two extra adjustments, a partial tax exemption and a deduction for amounts already taxed during the holding period, that a plain share never needs.
This calculator's asset selector exists because of that split. Choosing “stocks”, “cryptocurrency”, or “fund“ is not a cosmetic label. It routes your transaction to a genuinely different set of rules, and the questions you see afterward change to match. Selecting a fund reveals a fund-type field and a Vorabpauschale question that a share sale never shows; selecting crypto reveals a taxable-income question that a stock sale never needs, because that gain is taxed at your personal rate rather than a flat one. Nothing you are asked is decorative; every field feeds a specific line in the calculation.
For the wider picture of how Germany taxes each investment type on an ongoing basis, from dividends to inheritance interactions, see our complete guide to capital gains tax in Germany. This page focuses on a single transaction instead.
Start with the transaction, not the headline tax rate
It is tempting to ask “what's the tax rate on capital gains in Germany“ and expect one number back. The honest answer is that the rate depends entirely on what you are describing, so this calculator starts from the opposite end: describe the transaction first, in plain terms anyone can fill in without a tax background, and let the rate follow from that.
Every asset class shares the same four core facts: when you acquired the asset, when you disposed of it, what it cost you including transaction fees, and what you received for it net of transaction fees. Everything else, whether that is a fund type, a depreciation figure, or an own-use history, is asset-specific detail layered on top of that shared skeleton.
How purchase price, fees and sale proceeds become a tax basis
The calculator keeps two numbers separate throughout, and the result screen shows both: the economic gain and the taxable gain. The economic gain is simply what you actually made: your net sale proceeds (sale price minus selling costs) minus your acquisition basis (purchase price plus buying costs). It is the number your bank account would agree with.
The taxable gain is what German tax law actually charges tax on, and it can differ from the economic gain in either direction. A Sparer-Pauschbetrag or a loss pot can shrink it below the economic gain. A fund's cumulative Vorabpauschale works the other way at the margin: it comes off the raw gain in full before the fund type's partial exemption is applied, so the exemption ends up covering less than 30%, 15%, 60% or 80% of the economic gain itself. Showing both figures side by side, rather than only the final tax bill, is deliberate: it lets you see exactly which adjustments moved you from one to the other.
Why some gains receive the 25% regime while others enter your normal taxable income
Stocks, ETFs, bonds, certificates and derivatives all fall under Section 20 EStG, Germany's capital-income regime. Gains here are taxed at a flat rate under Section 32d EStG, generally 25% plus solidarity surcharge and, if you are a church-tax payer, church tax computed on a reduced basis rather than simply added on top. This rate does not depend on your salary or any other income; a low earner and a high earner selling identical shares for an identical gain owe the same percentage.
Cryptocurrency and other privately held assets like art, precious metals or foreign currency instead fall under Section 23 EStG, the private-disposal rules. Gains here are not flat-rate at all. They become part of your ordinary taxable income and are subject to the annual progressive income-tax tariff under Section 32a EStG, the same tariff your annual tax assessment uses (not the monthly Lohnsteuer withholding your payroll runs, which is a different calculation entirely). That is a meaningfully different outcome, and it is also why this calculator sometimes asks for your taxable income and sometimes does not: the flat-rate regime does not need it, and the progressive regime cannot produce a tax figure without it.
Anna bought shares in March 2021 and sold them in February 2026, with part of her annual Sparer-Pauschbetrag still unused. Here is this calculator's own output for that sale:
| Sale proceeds, net of sale costs | 13,500.00 € |
| Purchase price and purchase costs | -8,000.00 € |
| Economic gain | 5,500.00 € |
| Sparer-Pauschbetrag used | -400.00 € |
| Taxable capital income | 5,100.00 € |
| Capital-income tax (Section 32d EStG) | 1,275.00 € |
| Solidarity surcharge | 70.13 € |
| Church tax | 0.00 € |
| Total tax | 1,345.13 € |
How allowances and loss pots change the result
Two mechanisms can reduce a Section 20 gain before the 25% rate ever applies, and this calculator asks about both rather than assuming either is fully available. The Sparer-Pauschbetrag is an annual allowance, currently €1,000 for a single filer or €2,000 for a married couple filing jointly, but it is shared across all of your capital income for the year. If dividends or interest earlier in the year already used part of it, only the remainder is left for this sale, which is why the calculator asks how much is still unused rather than whether you have a Freistellungsauftrag on file at all.
Loss pots work differently and follow a rule this calculator enforces exactly: a loss from selling other shares can only offset a gain from selling shares, never dividends, interest, or gains from funds, bonds or derivatives. A loss from those other instruments joins a separate, more flexible pot that can offset almost any positive capital income. Entering a loss-pot figure here represents an amount your broker or your annual tax assessment has already confirmed as usable; the calculator does not attempt to reconstruct your full trading history from a single transaction.
Why a fund sale needs information that a stock sale does not
An ETF or mutual fund sale starts from the same flat-rate Section 20 foundation as a share sale, but two additional mechanics from the 2018 investment tax reform apply before the 25% rate does. The first is Teilfreistellung, a partial tax exemption whose size depends on what the fund actually invests in: 30% for an equity fund, 15% for a mixed fund, 60% for a domestic real estate fund, 80% for a foreign real estate fund, and no exemption at all for a fund that does not meet one of those categories, such as most bond or money market funds.
The second is the Vorabpauschale, a small notional gain your broker has likely already reported to the tax office every January you held an accumulating or partially distributing fund, even though you never sold anything. Because that amount has already been recognized for tax purposes, it comes off your gain when you finally do sell, and the order matters: the full, un-exempted Vorabpauschale is subtracted first, and only the remainder receives the fund type's partial exemption. Reversing that order would apply the exemption twice and understate the tax.
Ben bought units in an equity ETF in April 2022 and sold them in May 2026. His broker had already recognized a Vorabpauschale during the years he held it:
| Sale proceeds, net of sale costs | 9,000.00 € |
| Purchase price and purchase costs | -6,000.00 € |
| Economic gain | 3,000.00 € |
| Vorabpauschale already recognized | -180.00 € |
| Gain after Vorabpauschale | 2,820.00 € |
| Partial tax exemption (Teilfreistellung) | -846.00 € |
| Taxable investment income after exemption | 1,974.00 € |
| Sparer-Pauschbetrag used | -1,000.00 € |
| Taxable capital income | 974.00 € |
| Capital-income tax (Section 32d EStG) | 243.50 € |
| Solidarity surcharge | 13.39 € |
| Church tax | 0.00 € |
| Total tax | 256.89 € |
Why the calculator asks for taxable income for some assets but not others
This is the single most common point of confusion, so it is worth stating plainly: the calculator asks for your taxable income (zu versteuerndes Einkommen, or zvE) only for crypto and other private-disposal assets, never for stocks, funds, bonds or derivatives. The reason is structural, not arbitrary. Section 20 gains are taxed at a flat rate that does not depend on your other income at all, so asking for it would not change the result. Section 23 gains are added on top of your other income and taxed at your personal rate, which by definition cannot be computed without knowing what that other income is.
Your zvE is not your gross salary. It is the figure on your annual tax assessment after the standard deductions, allowances and Vorsorgeaufwendungen have already been subtracted, generally lower than what your employer paid you before tax. If you do not know it, the calculator still tells you everything except the final euro amount: whether the gain clears the relevant threshold, what the taxable amount is, and that an income figure is needed to go further, rather than guessing and presenting a number that might be wrong.
Priya bought Bitcoin in February 2026 and sold it six months later, well within the one-year holding period. With her taxable income from before the sale supplied, the calculator can estimate the actual tax:
| Sale proceeds, net of sale costs | 7,000.00 € |
| Purchase price and purchase costs | -4,000.00 € |
| Economic gain | 3,000.00 € |
| Full years held | 0 years |
| This transaction's result | 3,000.00 € |
| Other private-disposal activity this year | 0.00 € |
| Annual private-disposal result without this transaction | 0.00 € |
| Annual private-disposal result including this transaction | 3,000.00 € |
| Taxable amount caused by this transaction (Section 23 EStG) | 3,000.00 € |
| Your taxable income plus other private-disposal activity, without this transaction | 38,000.00 € |
| Your taxable income plus other private-disposal activity, with this transaction | 41,000.00 € |
| Income tax effect of this transaction | 944.00 € |
| Solidarity surcharge | 0.00 € |
| Church tax | 0.00 € |
| Total tax | 944.00 € |
How to read economic gain, taxable gain and tax-free gain in the result
Every result this calculator produces separates three things that a simple percentage cannot: the economic gain, the taxable gain, and whether the transaction is tax-free and why. When a sale is exempt, whether from the holding period, the own-use exception, or the everyday-use-item exclusion, that is shown prominently as the headline of the result, not buried as an incidental “€0 tax” line that could just as easily mean the calculator found nothing to say.
When a transaction is a loss, the result explains which loss category it falls into and what it can offset, rather than only displaying a zero. A share loss and a general capital loss behave differently under the law, and knowing which one you have matters for what you do with it on your tax return, whether that is this year or a future one.
What your German broker may already have calculated for you
For stocks, funds, bonds and derivatives, your German broker is legally required to withhold Abgeltungsteuer automatically at the point of sale in most cases, applying your Freistellungsauftrag and, where relevant, loss pots it holds on your own account with that broker. This calculator is not trying to replace that withholding; it is here to help you understand it, verify it against your own numbers, and see what changes if you have loss pots or allowance headroom sitting at a different broker that this one cannot see.
For cryptocurrency and most other private-disposal assets under Section 23 EStG, German brokers and exchanges generally withhold nothing at all. Those gains are your own responsibility to report on your tax return, which is exactly the situation this calculator is built to help you estimate before you file.
When an official tax assessment can differ from this estimate
This calculator estimates one transaction using the rules that apply to the ordinary case for its asset class. Your actual Steuerbescheid draws on your entire tax return: every other source of income, every deduction, and any credits or treaty relief that apply to your specific situation, none of which a single-transaction calculator can see. It can also apply specialist provisions this calculator deliberately does not compute, each flagged as a special case above rather than silently approximated, including pre-2009 grandfathered securities and shareholdings of 1% or more.
Treat this result as a well-sourced estimate for planning and understanding, not as a substitute for your assessment or for individual tax advice on a transaction that matters to you.
Records worth keeping before you sell
The single biggest source of estimate error in a calculator like this one is not the tax law; it is missing or forgotten paperwork. Before you sell, it is worth having on hand:
- Your original purchase confirmation, showing the date, price and any fees paid, especially for assets bought many years ago
- Annual tax certificates (Jahressteuerbescheinigung) from your broker for any fund holding, which itemize Vorabpauschalen you may otherwise have to reconstruct from memory
- Documentation of any usable loss pot, whether at the same broker or confirmed on a prior tax assessment
Cases this calculator deliberately does not estimate
Rather than silently approximating a case it cannot handle correctly, this calculator identifies it as a special case and explains why. The situations flagged this way include:
- Business assets and professional or commercial trading, which follow entirely different rules than private investment sales
- Shareholdings of 1% or more at any point in the preceding 5 years (Section 17 EStG), taxed differently from an ordinary retail share sale
- Shares first acquired before 1 January 2009, which carry their own transition rules from before the Abgeltungsteuer existed
- Bonds, certificates and derivatives first acquired before 1 January 2009, whose transition rules depend on the specific instrument and acquisition history rather than a single cutoff date
- Fund units first acquired before 1 January 2018, which the 2018 investment tax reform's deemed-disposal mechanic applies to (with a further protected-gain allowance specifically for units bought before 2009)
- NFTs, liquidity mining, and other token structures the BMF's own crypto guidance does not yet cover
- Certificates, ETCs and ETNs whose structure is unclear; these do not always behave like direct ownership of the underlying asset
- Real estate and property sales of any kind; this asset class is temporarily disabled while its own rules (the ten-year holding period, the own-use exception, inherited-property basis) are refined further
- Cross-border treaty or exit-tax (Wegzugsbesteuerung) situations
Sources, methodology and update policy
Every rule this calculator applies is checked directly against the statute text or official guidance below, not against secondary summaries. Rates and thresholds are versioned by tax year in the calculator's own configuration rather than hardcoded, and this page is reviewed whenever the underlying law changes.
- Section 20 EStG (capital income, loss offsetting)
- Section 23 EStG (private disposal transactions)
- Section 32d EStG (flat-rate capital-income tax)
- Section 17 EStG (substantial shareholdings)
- Section 52 EStG (transition rules for securities acquired before 2009)
- InvStG Section 18 (calculating the Vorabpauschale)
- InvStG Section 19 (Vorabpauschale reduction on disposal)
- InvStG Section 20 (Teilfreistellung)
- InvStG Section 56 (2018 transition rules for fund units acquired before 2018)
- BMF letter of 6 March 2025 on the taxation of cryptocurrency
Frequently asked questions
I am not sure which category my investment falls under. What should I pick?
Use the category your broker's own tax documentation uses, not a guess based on the product wrapper. Most certificates, ETCs and ETNs are “bond / certificate” for tax purposes, taxed under Section 20 EStG, because you hold a claim against the issuer rather than the underlying asset itself. But this is not universal: the Bundesfinanzhof has held that a physically backed gold bearer bond (the well-known Xetra-Gold case) is instead a private-disposal asset under Section 23 EStG, because it embodies a genuine claim to delivery of physical gold rather than a monetary claim. Do not infer the tax treatment from the product name or wrapper type alone; check the product's own tax classification, and treat this result as a starting point if you are not certain.
What is “taxable income before this gain”, and why does the calculator only ask for it sometimes?
It is your zu versteuerndes Einkommen (zvE), the figure on your annual tax assessment after all deductions, not your gross salary. We only need it for crypto and other private-disposal sales, because those gains are added to your normal income and taxed at your personal rate. Stock, fund, bond and derivative gains instead get the standard separate Section 32d flat-rate result shown here; your official assessment can still come out lower if the Günstigerprüfung under Section 32d(6) produces a better result once your full annual income is known.
Why does the calculator ask if my Sparer-Pauschbetrag is unused, instead of just asking if I have a Freistellungsauftrag?
Having a Freistellungsauftrag on file does not mean the whole allowance is still available. Dividends or interest earned earlier in the year may have already used part of it. Enter only what is genuinely left for the year.
I have never heard of a Vorabpauschale. Do I need to worry about it?
If you held an accumulating or partially distributing fund across more than one calendar year, your broker likely already reported a small notional gain against you each January under Section 18 InvStG, even though you did not sell anything. Section 19 InvStG then has that cumulative amount reduce the gain when you eventually do sell, so it is not taxed twice. Your broker's annual tax certificates list it; even a fund bought partway through its first calendar year still gets a prorated Vorabpauschale for the months you held it, so do not assume it is zero just because you did not own it for the whole year.
My broker already withheld tax on this sale. Why calculate it again?
German brokers withhold Abgeltungsteuer automatically on most stock, fund, bond and derivative sales, so this calculator mainly helps you understand and verify that withholding rather than replace it. For crypto and other private-disposal sales, brokers generally do not withhold anything at all, since those gains are reported on your own tax return.
Why might my actual tax assessment differ from this estimate?
This calculator covers the ordinary case for each asset class but deliberately does not compute several specialist situations, shown as a flagged special case above when they apply: pre-2009 grandfathered securities, 1% or larger shareholdings, and multi-lot foreign currency or crypto positions among them. Your actual assessment also applies any other income, deductions and credits on your full tax return that this calculator, built around a single transaction, does not see.
Written and maintained by Basaveswara Rao. Last reviewed on September 15, 2026.