Loss certificate for crypto ETNs: “must reach the paying agent by December 15 of the current year”

The loss certificate is a document your bank issues only on request, and that request has a hard expiry date. Section 43a(3) sentence 5 of the German Income Tax Act devotes a single sentence to it: the irrevocable request “must reach the paying agent by December 15 of the current year”. Reaching means arriving, not posting. So anyone holding crypto ETNs or crypto ETPs in a securities account at a German bank and sitting on a loss there decides over the coming eight weeks whether that loss will ever reduce a tax payment.

One distinction matters right at the start: this text is about crypto securities in a securities account, not about coins on a trading platform or in your own wallet. Directly held coins fall under Section 23 of the Income Tax Act with its one-year holding period, and there is neither a loss pot at the bank nor a loss certificate. Which of the two routes applies to you depends on the product in your account, and that is precisely where many tax returns come apart.

Loss certificate: what Section 43a(3) requires of the paying agent

A loss certificate is the officially prescribed statement from your bank about the size of the unsettled loss in your account at the end of the year. The law calls the bank the “paying agent” because it remits the withholding tax on investment income on your behalf. The institution retains 25 percent of every taxable gain, plus the solidarity surcharge, 26.375 percent together, and somewhat more where church tax applies.

The sequence sits in three sentences of the law that build on one another. Sentence 2 obliges the bank to offset negative investment income against positive income up to that amount within the current calendar year. If a shortfall remains at year-end, sentence 3 has it carried automatically into the next calendar year. Sentence 4 opens the alternative: on request the bank issues a certificate for that amount, and “the loss carryforward lapses in this case”. So you get the loss either as a credit at that one bank or as a document for your tax return, never both.

No particular form is required; at most brokers the request runs through the message inbox or a button in the tax settings. Irrevocable means you cannot withdraw it once sent, not even on December 16 when the market turns.

The loss offset pot sits at the bank, not at the tax office

A loss offset pot is a running account that each custodian bank keeps separately for its own customers. It collects your realised losses and deducts them from future gains at the same institution before tax is withheld. In practice banks keep several such pots, at least one for share disposals and one for all other investment income, because Section 20(6) sentence 4 of the Income Tax Act permits losses on shares to be offset against gains on shares only.

The withholding tax on investment income is a tax at source: the institution deducts it when the gain arises and remits it before the money reaches your account. That is why the state of the pot determines your tax burden at the very moment you sell. Price losses that exist only on paper change nothing about it: only what you have realised goes into the pot.

The pots do not talk to each other. A shortfall of 4,000 euros from a crypto ETN at Bank A never meets a gain of 4,000 euros from a crypto ETN at Bank B as long as no certificate is on file. Bank B retains withholding tax on its gain and remits it, Bank A carries the shortfall forward into the next year. The net result is that you pay tax on a gain matched by a loss of the same size.

Two securities accounts have long been the normal case. Anyone holding crypto ETNs in the account at their main bank and running an account at a neobroker alongside has two separate pots. The same applies to married couples without a joint exemption order: the law provides for joint offsetting only where a joint exemption order is in place.

Crypto ETN, ETP and coin: three routes, two categories of income

A crypto ETN is a bearer debt security traded on an exchange that tracks the price of a coin. Whoever buys one acquires a claim against the issuer, not a coin. Which category of income results is determined by the structure of the individual security, and the products differ markedly in that respect. We have set the three routes into a securities account side by side in a separate comparison of certificate, ETN and coin.

For the December 15 question only one thing counts: does your bank retain withholding tax when you sell? Then your security runs through the pot, and the deadline concerns you. If, by contrast, the annual tax statement carries no entry for that sale, the transaction sits outside the banking system and you declare it yourself. The overview of which crypto fund products can be traded in Germany at all shows how widely the constructions differ.

Two terms separate the cases. Monetary claims are entitlements to money, and disposal gains from them belong to investment income. A claim to delivery in kind, by contrast, is an entitlement to the surrender of an asset and does not fall under that heading. Independently of this classification, issuer risk remains with every ETN: if the issuer becomes insolvent you are left standing as a creditor, even where the security is physically backed.

The bank itself is no oracle either. The fact that an institution offers several dozen crypto ETNs for purchase says nothing about how each of those securities is treated for tax. What governs is the issuer's base prospectus and, in the end, the tax office.

Xetra-Gold and the delivery claim: the ruling behind the classification

Why some exchange-traded debt security does not fall under investment income was decided by the Federal Fiscal Court on gold, long before crypto securities existed. The ruling of May 12, 2015 in case VIII R 19/14, identical in substance to VIII R 35/14, concerned Xetra-Gold. The claimant had bought in 2008 and sold in 2011 at a gain of 18,936.76 euros.

The holding is terse: the gain from the disposal of an exchange-traded bearer debt security “which securitises a claim against the issuer for delivery of physical gold and tracks the current gold price” is at any rate not taxable under Section 20 where the issuer must use the capital virtually in full to acquire gold. Purchase and sale of the security are to be assessed like a direct purchase and sale of physical gold.

The mechanism behind it is worth two sentences, because it can be carried over to crypto. A monetary claim belongs to investment income, a claim to delivery in kind does not. Where a security securitises the claim to the surrender of an asset and is fully backed by that asset, tax law treats it like the asset itself.

Several European issuers of physically backed crypto ETPs replicate precisely that construction, and they advertise it. Whether the analogy holds is not thereby settled: there is as yet no ruling of the Federal Fiscal Court on physically backed crypto securities, the tax administration has not commented on the point in general terms, and individual banks retain withholding tax despite a delivery claim. Anyone relying on the gold line carries the burden of argument before the tax office if it comes to that.

Two accounts, one loss: the calculation that makes December 15 expensive

An example with round numbers shows the sum at stake. Suppose you sold crypto ETNs at Bank A in the spring at a loss of 4,000 euros and other crypto ETNs at Bank B in the autumn at a gain of 4,000 euros. Both transactions fall in the same calendar year and both run through the withholding tax on investment income.

Without a certificate, Bank B retains 26.375 percent of the 4,000 euro gain, that is 1,055 euros. Bank A carries the 4,000 euro loss forward into the following year. Your tax burden for this year amounts to 1,055 euros, although in economic terms you are at zero.

With a certificate from Bank A, requested by December 15, you enter both amounts in your tax return. The tax office offsets them and the 1,055 euros come back. The loss carryforward at Bank A lapses in exchange, because the law does not allow both side by side.

The sum depends on your numbers, the mechanism is always the same. Because the bank can only offset the carryforward in the following year, and then only if gains arise there at all, the certificate is worth having above all where the credit sits at a bank you will barely trade with in future. The reverse holds just as calmly: anyone running their whole portfolio at one institution need do nothing, the bank offsets by itself.

Without a request the bank carries the loss into the next year

The most common worry is the wrong one. A missed December 15 does not destroy the loss, it locks it. Under sentence 3 the unsettled amount moves automatically into the next calendar year and remains available there, with no time limit, but only at that one bank.

A second rule sharpens this. Section 20(6) sentence 5 of the Income Tax Act provides that losses from investment income subject to withholding tax “may only be offset” or reduce future income “where a certificate within the meaning of Section 43a(3) sentence 4 is on file”. Without that document the tax office cannot take such a loss into account in the assessment at all. So the route via the tax return is not available as a reserve.

Late filing is not provided for. The law names a cut-off date and no hardship provision, and the bank has no latitude to accept the request later. Anyone who realises on December 20 that they needed the certificate waits for next year.

Transferring a securities account: why sentence 6 rules the certificate out

For one case the law provides a more elegant route. If you transfer your holdings in full to another securities account, the transferring bank notifies the receiving bank, at your request, of the size of the unsettled loss. The pot moves with you. Sentence 6 makes clear in the same breath: “a certificate under sentence 4 may not be issued in this case”.

A plain order of operations follows for anyone wanting to change broker. Either you transfer the account in full and take the pot along, or you have the loss certified and declare it yourself. A partial transfer does not trigger the notification; there only the certificate remains.

Saver's allowance of 1,000 euros: the order inside the pot

The saver's allowance is the tax-free amount up to which investment income remains untaxed. Section 20(9) of the Income Tax Act sets it at 1,000 euros, and at 2,000 euros for spouses assessed jointly. It takes effect at the bank only with an exemption order.

The order of operations decides real money. The bank first offsets losses against gains and applies the exemption order only to the surplus remaining after that. Anyone with a 1,000 euro gain and a 1,000 euro loss in the same account in one year does not use up their allowance, because nothing remains after offsetting. That is no disadvantage, but it explains why an unused exemption order at year-end need not be a sign of a bad year.

An exemption order in the wrong place, by contrast, costs liquidity. If your full order sits at the bank where only losses arose, you pay tax at the other from the first euro. The tax return brings that back, but only months later.

Crypto losses under Section 23 of the Income Tax Act stay outside

Anyone holding coins directly alongside ETNs runs into a wall that December 15 does not open. Gains and losses from directly held crypto assets count as private disposals under Section 23 of the Income Tax Act. Those gains have their own one-year holding period, their own exemption threshold of 1,000 euros and their own loss circle.

Losses from private disposals may only be offset against gains of the same kind. A shortfall from selling Bitcoin inside the one-year period therefore never meets a gain from a crypto ETN, in any year and with any certificate. Which offsets are possible within Section 23 we have worked through using the example of crypto losses and share gains, and what becomes of old losses from previous years is set out in our account of the crypto loss carryforward.

One difference falls in favour of the coins. Under Section 23(3) sentence 8, losses from private disposals also reduce the gains of the immediately preceding year. There is no such loss carryback in investment income, where only the carryforward remains. Anyone who sold cryptocurrencies held privately at a loss inside the speculative period should therefore check the previous year for gains of the same kind as well. Income from staking and lending sits somewhere else again, namely in other income under Section 22 no. 3 of the Income Tax Act, and forms a third circle.

In practice that means two calculations and two forms. The banking side runs through Annex KAP and the annual tax statement, the coin side through Annex SO and your own records. Anyone mixing the two gets a query from the tax office. A tax tool for a crypto portfolio helps above all on the second side, because the bank delivers the first one finished.

Is the loss certificate worth it in your case?

Three constellations cover almost everything. First: a single securities account, losses and gains at the same institution. The bank then offsets by itself, and a request would swap a comfortable route for a cumbersome one.

Second: several accounts, a sizeable loss at one, a gain at another in the same year. This is the case the provision was made for, and here the request brings the money back with your next tax return.

Third: several accounts, a loss at one, gains nowhere. The calculation is then open. The carryforward at the bank takes effect automatically as soon as gains arise there again, and costs no effort. The certificate, by contrast, brings the loss into the tax office's loss assessment, where it stands ready independently of your banking relationship, even if you close the account later. Anyone planning to change provider is usually better served by the certificate, provided no full account transfer is pending.

Flat-rate withholding tax from 2027: what the draft bill would change about the split

The split between the bank's pot and the private disposal is up for review. A draft bill has been sitting at the Federal Ministry of Finance since September 30, 2026 that would move crypto assets into investment income under Section 20 and delete the one-year period for new acquisitions. The federal cabinet did not adopt it on October 14, and there is no new date for doing so, as we recorded in the status of the reform on October 16, 2026.

For this year the draft changes nothing. It is a working version, not law in force, and without a cabinet decision and the approval of the Bundestag and Bundesrat it does not take effect. Were it to come, directly held coins would one day move into the same system that crypto ETNs already sit in, complete with withholding tax at source and a loss pot at the bank. The December 15 deadline would then concern considerably more investors than it does today.

Our assessment: December 15 is underrated because it is not a tax deadline in the usual sense. It does not run out at the tax office but at the bank, it appears on no tax assessment, and nobody reminds you of it. Set against that, the legal position is unambiguous: Section 20(6) sentence 5 makes the certificate the condition for a loss subject to withholding tax to count in the assessment at all, and Section 43a(3) sentence 5 names exactly one day. What argues against filing the request reflexively: it is irrevocable and it deletes the comfortable automatic carryforward. Anyone running a single account gains nothing and takes on paperwork. No recommendation to buy or sell a crypto security follows from any of this, and a total loss remains possible with every one of these products.

Loss certificate: after December 15 the loss stays in the pot

1. Count your securities accounts. For every account holding crypto securities, open your broker's running loss overview and note the loss pot and the realised gains. Only where the shortfall and the surplus are spread across different institutions is the request an issue at all. How differently the providers present that overview is shown by the broker comparison.
2. File the request in good time. Send the request for a loss certificate so that it has arrived at the bank before December 15, and keep the acknowledgement of receipt. Plan a few days of buffer, because the date of arrival counts and not the date of sending. Anyone wanting to change provider while doing so should check in the overview of trading venues beforehand whether a full account transfer is the better route.
3. Keep the two calculations apart. File the banking side with the annual tax statement and Annex KAP separately from the coin side with Annex SO. A tax tool or portfolio tracker takes over the record-keeping for directly held coins, for which no bank issues you anything.

You can read the wording of the provision yourself: the governing sentence is in Section 43a(3) of the German Income Tax Act, sentence 5.

(As of October 19, 2026. This article is not investment advice and not tax advice. Prices, fee structures and tax rules change; check the terms with the provider before you buy and your personal tax position with a tax adviser.)