Two €1,000 limits for crypto ETNs, and only one works on its own

The documented position: you only need an exemption order for crypto if your coins sit in a German securities account as a security, that is as a crypto ETN or ETP. For Bitcoin on an exchange or in your own wallet, taxation runs through a different section of the law, and an exemption order has no effect there. Both routes work with an amount of €1,000, and that alone produces the costliest mix-ups in German tax law on crypto assets. Our own assessment follows in a separate section below.

The difference is not a detail for tax advisers. Under one variant the bank deducts tax immediately as long as no order is on file. Under the other, nothing at all happens until the tax return. Get the two confused and you either hand up to €264 of liquidity to your custodian bank or wait for relief that never comes.

What an exemption order is and which crypto products it reaches

An exemption order is an instruction to your bank not to withhold tax on investment income up to a certain amount. The legal basis is section 44a paragraph 2 sentence 1 number 1 of the German Income Tax Act: the condition for refraining from the tax deduction is that the party obliged to deduct the tax holds an exemption order in the officially prescribed form. Without that order the bank remits tax to the tax office from the first euro of income, even if you stay well below the allowance at year-end.

The decisive question is therefore whether your crypto exposure produces investment income at all. It does if you go through a securities account. A crypto ETN is legally a debt security, that is a claim against the issuer. Such paper falls under other capital claims of any kind under section 20 paragraph 2 number 7 of the Act. Your custodian bank is then the paying agent, it withholds the tax, and an exemption order takes effect.

If instead you buy the coin itself, at an exchange or through a broker that credits you with real crypto assets, there is no paying agent remitting tax. You alone are responsible for the declaration, via the Anlage SO schedule of the tax return.

Saver's allowance: €1,000 for single filers, €2,000 for jointly assessed couples

The first of the two thousands is called the saver's allowance and appears in section 20 paragraph 9 of the Income Tax Act. The wording is terse: in determining income from capital, an amount of €1,000 is to be deducted as income-related expenses. For jointly assessed spouses a combined saver's allowance of €2,000 applies.

Two properties of this amount are rarely explained. First, it rules out deducting actual income-related expenses. Custody fees, specialist literature or software cannot be claimed on top for investment income; the allowance replaces them entirely. Second, under section 20 paragraph 9 sentence 4 it may not exceed the investment income offset against it. So it creates no loss you could use elsewhere.

How it works matters: the allowance is a deductible amount. If you have €1,400 of income from crypto ETNs, €1,000 stays free and only €400 is taxed. The amount lapses with the calendar year and cannot be carried into the next one.

The exemption threshold under section 23: €1,000 that vanishes entirely one euro above

The second thousand looks the same and works completely differently. For directly held coins, section 23 paragraph 3 sentence 5 of the Act applies, and it reads: gains remain tax-free if the total gain realised from private disposals in the calendar year amounted to less than €1,000.

The word "less" carries the whole weight. At a gain of €999 you pay nothing. At a gain of €1,000 the entire amount is taxable, not just the euro above the threshold, and at your personal income tax rate. An exemption threshold knows no partial relief; it tips. This error is so widespread that we devoted a separate article to it: the €1,000 exemption threshold and the most common misconception about crypto gains.

The two amounts side by side

With the saver's allowance, €400 of €1,400 in income stays taxable. With the exemption threshold under section 23, all €1,400 of a €1,400 gain are taxable, provided you held the coins for less than a year. The amounts are equal, the consequences differ by a factor of three and a half. On top of that the two pots stay separate: an unused saver's allowance does not help you with a coin sale, and an unused exemption threshold does not reduce your flat-rate withholding tax.

How to steer your burden through product choice is clear from a look at our comparison of crypto tax tools and portfolio trackers: anyone holding both worlds in a securities account needs a report that states section 20 and section 23 separately.

Crypto ETNs in a securities account: 25 percent withholding tax instead of a one-year holding period

A fixed rate applies to investment income. Section 32d paragraph 1 sentence 1 of the Act provides that income tax on income from capital is 25 percent. Together with the solidarity surcharge you land at 26.375 percent, and higher with church tax. That rate applies regardless of how long you held the paper.

With crypto ETNs, that removes the advantage many investors take for granted with crypto assets: a holding period of more than a year does not make the gain tax-free here. Conversely the rate is capped. Anyone on a high personal tax rate who sells within a year is better off with the ETN than with the directly held coin.

What else the product brings with it we set out using one major bank's offering, namely around 50 crypto ETNs in ING's securities account. The tax classification is only one of several cost questions there.

The delivery claim is part of the answer, and the literature disagrees about it

This is where it becomes contentious, and it is more honest to say so openly. Many crypto ETNs are physically backed with real coins, and some grant the investor a claim to delivery of those coins. It is precisely that delivery claim that unsettles the clean allocation to section 20.

The tax guide from software provider Buhl assigns crypto ETNs with a delivery claim to directly held coins and applies the one-year speculation period and the exemption threshold to them. Products without physical backing are treated by the same guide as investment income subject to flat-rate withholding tax regardless of the holding period. Other guides do not separate ETNs and spot holdings at all and say only that the saver's allowance applies to investment income and not to private crypto gains.

For you that produces a concrete task no calculator can take off your hands: your ETN's product terms state whether a delivery claim exists. Which of the two thousands counts for that paper depends on it. And because in practice the custodian bank withholds flat-rate tax even where the classification is disputed, a differing view leaves only the route via the tax return.

A second uncertainty lies in the legislative process. The future of the one-year holding period is under political negotiation, and the position changes in weeks, not years. How far the process has got we recorded on October 16, 2026 in our piece on the status of the crypto holding-period reform. For the current year, the legal position described above applies.

Directly held coins on an exchange: an exemption order has no effect here

Anyone holding their coins at a crypto exchange cannot lodge an exemption order there, and that is no failing on the exchange's part. An exemption order is addressed to a body obliged to deduct tax. A crypto exchange withholds no tax on disposal gains from private disposals, so there is nothing it could refrain from.

An exception arises when the same platform also offers you a securities account. Two regimes then run under one login, and keeping them apart becomes a chore. What that looks like we described using the case of a securities account at a crypto exchange, where investment income tax suddenly arises.

The official form and the tax identification number

The law requires the order in the officially prescribed form. In practice that means you use your bank's form, usually found in online banking under taxes or exemption order. Three details make it effective, and most orders fail on one of them.

• Your tax identification number. Without it the order stays ineffective and the bank keeps withholding.
• The amount you assign to this bank.
• For spouses, the decision whether to file a joint order. That has consequences going beyond the allowance.

Several accounts, one allowance

You may split the allowance across any number of banks, but the sum of all orders must not exceed €1,000, or €2,000 for spouses. So anyone with three securities accounts can assign €500, €300 and €200. Splitting is worth the effort only where income actually arises. An order for €600 at a bank paying you €40 in interest ties up €560 of exemption volume that your ETN account then lacks.

The spouses' joint order works at a second point too, and that one is almost always overlooked. Section 43a paragraph 3 sentence 2 of the Act provides that within the calendar year the bank offsets negative investment income up to the level of positive income, and: where a joint exemption order exists, a joint offset is made. The bank then sets one spouse's losses against the other's gains. Without a joint order each is left with their own result.

December 15 under section 43a paragraph 3 and its irrevocable application

Plenty of cut-off dates circulate at year-end, and most of them are banks' house deadlines. The law names only one, and it does not apply to the exemption order. Section 43a paragraph 3 sentence 5 of the Act puts it this way: the irrevocable application for issue of the certificate must reach the paying agent by December 15 of the current year.

What is meant is the loss certificate. With it the bank confirms a loss it could not offset itself, so that you can set it against gains at other banks in your tax return. The word "irrevocable" is in the statute, not in the small print: once filed, the application cannot be withdrawn.

For the exemption order itself the law names no cut-off date. It takes effect for the calendar year in which it is on file, and banks process it into December, often up to December 15 and sometimes later. Only your own bank's statement is binding on that. The legally hard deadline is the one named above, and it concerns something else.

The loss certificate can cost you the automatic loss carry-forward

Here is the point where well-meant year-end haste costs money, and it sits in two consecutive sentences of the statute. Section 43a paragraph 3 sentence 3 says: the unoffset loss is to be carried forward to the next calendar year. Sentence 4 says the bank issues a certificate of that loss on request, and adds: the loss carry-forward is forfeited in that case.

So the bank carries your loss into the next year of its own accord and offsets it there against your gains. Apply for the certificate and you give up that automatic mechanism. You trade an offset that runs without any action from you for a document you then have to claim yourself in your tax return.

The application makes sense only if you have gains at another bank that the loss can be set against. With only one securities account you take on work and gain nothing. Because the application is irrevocable, the step cannot be corrected either. Which deadlines run in detail we broke down in our piece on the loss certificate for crypto ETNs and its deadline.

Too late for 2026: the Anlage KAP schedule recovers the allowance

If the year is over and no order was on file, the allowance is not lost. The bank has remitted tax and you recover it through your tax return. For that you enter the investment income and the tax withheld in the Anlage KAP schedule; the tax office then grants the saver's allowance on assessment.

The outcome is no different whether the order was on file or you declare. The timing is: with an exemption order you keep the money straight away. Without it you lend the exchequer up to €264 interest-free for up to eighteen months. At €1,000 of income and a rate of 26.375 percent, that is the order of magnitude at stake.

Our assessment of the position on crypto ETNs

From this newsroom's point of view, the exemption order is the most poorly used lever available to investors holding crypto assets through a German securities account. Three evidenced points support that: the order costs nothing, it takes effect under section 44a immediately once on file, and without it the custodian bank withholds from the first euro. The only thing against it is the case where your exemption volume is already committed elsewhere, and that can be checked in a single online-banking session.

We stay cautious on the question of which section applies to a physically backed paper with a delivery claim. Expert opinions diverge, we know of no clarifying judgment, and the product terms differ from issuer to issuer. Anyone needing certainty here will not get it from a guide but from a binding ruling or a tax adviser. A total loss is possible with every product named here, including backed ETNs, because the claim is against the issuer.

Exemption order: without an application the allowance stays with the bank

Three steps take you from the rule to putting it into practice:

1. Establish the product type. Check your account statement for whether you hold crypto ETNs or real coins, and for ETNs whether a delivery claim exists. Which report states both regimes separately is shown by the comparison of crypto tax tools and portfolio trackers.
2. Lodge the order and split it. Assign the volume to the bank where the income arises, and keep the sum of all orders at €1,000, or €2,000 for spouses. Which providers run a securities account with crypto ETNs is in the comparison of crypto brokers.
3. Look at your loss position before December 15. Apply for a loss certificate only if you have gains at a second bank. Anyone who instead self-custodies and trades directly will find the venues in the crypto exchange comparison.

(As of October 21, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)