Use your tax allowance: sell and rebuy ETFs (with calculator)

Everyone has a saver's allowance of €1,000 a year. Capital income up to that amount stays tax-free; whatever is unused lapses on 31 December. If your ETF is in profit, you can use the allowance by selling part of it and buying it back straight away. You end up with almost the same position, but with a higher purchase price. When you finally sell later, your gain is smaller by that amount and you pay less tax. Our chapter on taxes on stocks explains the basics.

With equity ETFs, 30 % of the gain is tax-free. This is called partial exemption (Teilfreistellung). Only 70 % of the gain counts against your allowance. To use up €1,000, you therefore need €1,000 ÷ 0.7 = €1,428.57 of gain. For mixed funds with 15 % partial exemption it is €1,176.47; for funds without partial exemption exactly €1,000. How much you need to sell depends on how much gain sits in every euro of your position. If your ETF is 40 % above its purchase price, a value of €10,000 contains €4,000 of gain. You would then sell about €3,571. That is exactly what the calculator above works out.

1. Check your tax exemption order. Your broker app shows how much of your Freistellungsauftrag has been used this year. Dividends, interest on savings and earlier sales all count. If you have accounts at several banks, the orders together may not exceed €1,000. 2. Check the loss pot. If the bank already holds a loss for you, it offsets the gain against that first. The allowance only applies after that. 3. Sell. Ideally with a limit order during exchange hours, when the spread is small. 4. Buy back right away. The same ETF or an equivalent one, for the same amount. 5. Check the contract note. The sale note should show no tax, only allowance used. For the tax year, the trade date counts, not settlement two trading days later. Still, do not wait until the last day: Xetra does not trade on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, so in 2026 the last trading day is 30 December. Some brokers set their own cut-off dates.

Honestly: it is a small advantage, not a big one. You do not save the tax today, only when you finally sell at some point. With a €1,000 allowance that is at most €263.75, a little more with church tax. Repeated every year, it can add up to several thousand euros over decades. Three things can shrink the benefit. First, costs: with high order fees or a wide spread, little is left. Second, small amounts: if your ETF is only €50 in profit, the effort outweighs the gain. Third, your future: if you later only ever sell as much as fits into the allowance each year, you might never have paid the tax anyway. If you hold an accumulating ETF, the Vorabpauschale has also already taxed part of your gain. That part is deducted from the gain when you sell. Your bank shows the correct figure. If the account belongs to a GmbH, entirely different rules apply, see company investment account.

For accumulating ETFs, the bank debits the Vorabpauschale for the past year at the start of January. For tax purposes it counts as received on the first working day of the new year (§ 18(3) InvStG). So it uses part of the new year's allowance, not the old one. Plan a December sale with the full allowance of the current year. But leave some room in the new year if you want to sell again as early as January. How large it turns out for 2026 is worked out on our page about the Vorabpauschale 2027.

It also works the other way round: if a position is in the red, you can sell and rebuy it to use the loss for tax. The bank puts it into a loss offset pot and sets it against later gains. Which pot matters: losses from shares may only be offset against gains from shares (§ 20(6) EStG). ETF units are not shares. ETF losses go into the general pot and also reduce gains from other ETFs, interest and dividends. Germany has no wash-sale rule like the US that penalizes an immediate rebuy. The Federal Fiscal Court ruled that selling and quickly rebuying the same securities at different prices is not abuse (IX R 60/07). It can be different if the rebuy at the same price is arranged in advance with no price risk at all (IX R 5/16).

Losses normally stay at the bank where they arose and are carried forward to the next year. If you have losses at bank A and gains at bank B, they are not offset automatically. You then need a loss certificate (Verlustbescheinigung) from bank A. The request must reach the bank by 15 December (§ 43a(3) EStG) and cannot be withdrawn. With the certificate you claim the losses in your tax return on form Anlage KAP; the bank's own carry-forward then ends. If you miss the deadline, the loss is not gone. It stays at bank A and is offset there against future gains.

Married couples and registered partners filing jointly share €2,000. That is up to €2,857.14 of tax-free gain from equity ETFs. One partner can use the joint amount alone if the other has little capital income. For this you need a joint tax exemption order. It has a second advantage: only then does the bank offset one partner's losses against the other's gains. Check in autumn that the order is split correctly across your banks. What a regular savings plan adds up to over the years is shown by our calculator. Why crypto follows different tax rules is covered on our page about the crypto holding period. This page is not tax or investment advice.