German tax certificate per depot: what the lines mean

A German bank withholds tax on your investment income as if it were the only bank you have. It offsets gains and losses inside its own walls, applies the exemption order you gave it, and prints the result on one annual tax certificate per depot. With two or three depots, each certificate is correct and the total is still too much tax. The correction happens in the tax return, on Anlage KAP, and for losses only if you ask the bank for a loss certificate by 15 December.

That deadline is a little over three months away, which makes September a good time to read last year's certificates properly.

Two documents, one of them official

The Jahressteuerbescheinigung (annual tax certificate) is the document the tax office recognises. Banks issue it under section 45a of the Income Tax Act (EStG) on a template the Federal Ministry of Finance prescribes, most recently restated in its letter of 16 May 2025. Content, structure and order are fixed, which is why the certificates of two banks look alike.

The Erträgnisaufstellung (income statement) is not a statutory form. It is the bank's own list of what stands behind the certificate: each dividend, each sale with its acquisition cost, each amount of foreign tax. Its layout differs from bank to bank. You file the figures from the certificate; you check them with the Erträgnisaufstellung.

What the main lines of the certificate say

The certificate prints, next to each amount, the line of Anlage KAP it belongs in. The line numbers shift between tax years, so follow the certificate for the year in question. The meaning of the lines does not shift.

Höhe der Kapitalerträge (amount of investment income; line 7 of Anlage KAP for 2025) is a net figure. It is what remained after the bank offset losses against gains during the year, before the saver's allowance. It will not equal the sum of your dividends and gains, and it is not meant to.

Davon: Gewinne aus Aktienveräußerungen shows how much of that figure comes from selling shares. The split exists because of a rule that drives much of what follows: losses from selling shares may be offset only against gains from selling shares (section 20 (6) sentence 4 EStG). Funds and ETFs are not shares in this sense. Their losses go into the general pot, which can be set against any investment income.

In Anspruch genommener Sparer-Pauschbetrag is the part of the saver's allowance this bank used: at most EUR 1,000 per person and EUR 2,000 for spouses assessed jointly (section 20 (9) EStG), and only as much as your exemption order at this bank allowed.

Kapitalertragsteuer, Solidaritätszuschlag, Kirchensteuer are what the bank actually paid over: 25 per cent, plus 5.5 per cent of that as solidarity surcharge, which makes 26.375 per cent before church tax.

Angerechnete ausländische Steuer is foreign withholding tax the bank has already credited. Noch nicht angerechnete ausländische Steuer is the amount it could not credit. That second line is money only the tax return can recover.

Ersatzbemessungsgrundlage appears when the bank did not know your acquisition cost, typically after a depot transfer that arrived without purchase data. It then taxed 30 per cent of the sale proceeds as a substitute. If your real gain was smaller, your own purchase confirmation gets the difference back.

The two loss lines, one for share losses and one for all other losses, are the ones people misread. They are filled in only if you requested a loss certificate. An empty loss line does not mean you had no loss. It means the bank kept the loss and carried it into the next year in its own books.

Why several depots produce avoidable tax

Say you sold shares at a gain of EUR 12,000 in the depot at bank A. At bank B you sold other shares at a loss of EUR 9,000. Your exemption order of EUR 1,000 sits with bank C, where a savings account earned EUR 300 in interest. The numbers are invented; the mechanism is not.

Bank A knows nothing of B or C. It withholds 26.375 per cent of EUR 12,000, which is EUR 3,165. Bank B has no share gains to offset, so the EUR 9,000 waits in its share-loss pot. Bank C uses EUR 300 of the allowance and the remaining EUR 700 lapses for the year.

Seen across all three, your taxable income was EUR 12,000 less EUR 9,000 less the unused EUR 700: EUR 2,300, on which the tax is about EUR 607. You paid about EUR 2,558 more than that.

Section 32d (4) EStG is the way back. In the tax return you can ask for the withheld tax to be reviewed, expressly for an allowance not fully used, for losses the bank has not yet taken into account, for foreign tax not yet credited and for the substitute basis. The allowance, the foreign tax and the substitute basis need nothing but the certificates.

The loss needs more. A loss that was subject to withholding at a bank counts in the tax return only if a certificate under section 43a (3) sentence 4 EStG exists (section 20 (6), last sentence). The request must reach the bank by 15 December of the current year and cannot be withdrawn. Miss the date, and the EUR 9,000 is not gone, but it stays at bank B until you make share gains there. The EUR 2,374 of tax it would have saved remains with the tax office until then, which may be never if that depot is dormant.

When the loss certificate is the wrong move

Requesting it by reflex is the standard advice, and it is too simple. Once the bank certifies the loss, it sets its pot to zero. The loss now exists only in the tax return. If you had no matching gains elsewhere that year, the tax office carries it forward, and from then on only a tax return can use it. The bank that would have offset it automatically against next year's gains no longer can.

So the question in early December is specific. Is there, this year, taxed income at another bank that this loss could offset? For a share loss, are there share gains elsewhere? If yes, request the certificate. If the gains will come at the same bank next year, leave the loss where it is.

Two arrangements avoid the question. Spouses with a joint exemption order have their losses and gains offset across their accounts at the same bank by the bank itself at year end. And on a complete transfer of a depot to another bank, the old bank passes the unused loss to the new one on request; in that case it may not issue a certificate as well.

What to reconcile before the figures go into the return

A certificate is a bank's view of one depot. Three checks are worth half an hour per depot.

First, compare the dividends and sales in the Erträgnisaufstellung with your own record of the year. Look in particular at sales after a depot transfer, where the acquisition cost may not have travelled with the securities.

Second, add up across all banks: allowance used, losses carried, foreign tax not credited. The total used allowance should be EUR 1,000 or EUR 2,000. If it is less and tax was withheld anywhere, Anlage KAP is worth filing.

Third, write down each bank's two loss pots at year end. No certificate shows them unless you asked for one, and they are the basis for the December decision. Our year-end checklist from last November walks through the other dates, and the Vorabpauschale on accumulating funds is a January item of its own.

This per-depot view is what we built into the public markets area of Valued: gains, losses, income and tax withheld per depot and tax year, because every bank withholds on its own and keeps its own loss pots.

None of this is tax advice. The rules above are the general mechanism; whether a loss certificate or an assessment pays off in your case is for your tax adviser to decide. Put 15 December in the calendar now, with a reminder two weeks earlier, and note next to it which bank holds which pot.