Verlustbescheinigung: the 15 December deadline — and when it does not apply to you

Which case are you in?

What the certificate actually does

A German bank nets your gains and losses inside its own pots during the year. A loss left in there is not lost — it rolls forward — but it can only ever be set against future gains at that same bank.

Requesting the Verlustbescheinigung empties the pot and hands you the figure to put in your return, so the loss can be set against gains anywhere else: another German bank, or a foreign broker you declare yourself. That is the entire point of the exercise, and it is only worth doing if you actually have gains elsewhere to absorb it.

The request must reach the bank by 15 December of the year concerned (Sec. 43a(3) sentence 5 EStG). It is a statutory cut-off, not a bank policy, and it is irrevocable once made.

The separate loss pots

German law does not let every loss offset every gain. The pots are kept apart:

• Aktienverluste — losses from selling individual shares. These can only be set against gains from selling shares (Sec. 20(6) sentence 4 EStG). Not against ETF gains, not against dividends, not against interest.
• Sonstige Verluste — everything else in the Sec. 20 basket: ETFs and funds, bonds, certificates. These offset the rest of your capital income.
• Termingeschäfte — the €20,000 annual cap on derivative losses was repealed retroactively by the Jahressteuergesetz 2024, so this is no longer a separate restriction.

This is why "I made a loss, so I owe no tax" is often wrong: a share loss and an ETF gain in the same year do not cancel out.

Two other things the calendar decides

Sparerpauschbetrag — use it or lose it

€1,000 per person (€2,000 jointly assessed) of capital income is tax free each year. It does not carry forward. If your Freistellungsaufträge across banks do not add up to the full allowance, the unused part simply expires on 31 December — and with a foreign broker there is no Freistellungsauftrag at all, so the allowance is claimed in Anlage KAP.

Vorabpauschale — a charge with no sale

Accumulating funds carry a deemed advance income. Under Sec. 18(3) InvStG the Vorabpauschale for fund year Y is treated as received on the first stock exchange day of January in Y+1, based on what you held on 31 December — whether or not you sold anything, and whether or not the fund distributed.

A German bank deducts it automatically from your account in January. A foreign broker does not, so you calculate and declare it yourself. Tax-Wizard computes it from your holdings using the published Basiszins and shows which funds it covers — and which it could not price.

What Tax-Wizard does for foreign-broker investors

Upload your broker files and Tax-Wizard produces an ELSTER-ready report for Anlage KAP, KAP-INV and SO: gains and losses split into the correct pots, the Sparerpauschbetrag applied, foreign withholding tax tracked for credit, the Vorabpauschale calculated, and crypto handled under Sec. 23 EStG.

Full detail in the Germany tax guide.