[AT/DE] Moving from Austria to Germany

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Topic Author
ellaellela
Posts: 19
Joined: Wed Mar 18, 2020 7:43 am
Location: Austria

[AT/DE] Moving from Austria to Germany

Post by ellaellela »

Hi all,

as the title says, I have been living in Austria for several years, but due to a better job opportunity, I will be starting my new job in Munich in December.

While in Austria, I started investing in an ETF fund (FTSE All World Accumulating) via flatex (AT) - which is an Austrian tax-reporting broker, so they handle all the taxes and other things (they have to by law). It is not a large amount (up to 15k right now) and I have been investing for less than two years.

I plan on continuing investing once the probation period at the new job finishes. I am just unfamiliar what should I do with the investment I have made so far. The way I understand, I could:

1) sell the investment that I have done so far, pay the capital gains tax in Austria and start anew in Germany.

2) transfer the investment from the Austrian broker to a German one. I am curious what would this entail: paying the transfer fee, paying the capital gains tax in Austria? I would also need to wait to open a German brokerage account before doing it.

3) do nothing with the investment. In this case I would continue paying the annual tax in Austria and I would need to report this investment and paid tax to the German tax authority as well.

Question1: Did I miss anything?

Question2: Which one should I choose?

The 3rd option seems like a lot of hassle in the years to come;
the 2nd option should be a one-time-hassle, but what type of bureaucracy acrobatics would I need to perform?;
the 1st option seems the easiest and the cleanest (it is a small investment), but I am not sure how complicated it would become if I sell everything before the fund sends the annual report to the Austrian Kontrolbank - would I still need to pay some additional tax for this year in such case?

Thank you for your time!
WienerG
Posts: 88
Joined: Thu Feb 06, 2020 5:11 pm

Re: [AT/DE] Moving from Austria to Germany

Post by WienerG »

OP,

This should help you...

https://www.zobl-bauer.at/dachmarke/akt ... pierdepot/

Gute Reise!

WienerG
Flurry
Posts: 27
Joined: Mon Oct 25, 2021 9:29 am
Location: Austria (No kangaroos)

Re: [AT/DE] Moving from Austria to Germany

Post by Flurry »

You should just sell everything, pay your taxes and buy it again with a German broker.
Due to the "Wegzugbesteuerung" you still have to pay all the taxes in Austria when transferring the securities to a German broker, you can just delay it when moving to another EU-country but tax gets extremely complicated then so I wouldn't do it unless you have really high unrealized gains. On top of that you have to do an annoying security transfer which often causes problems.
Topic Author
ellaellela
Posts: 19
Joined: Wed Mar 18, 2020 7:43 am
Location: Austria

Re: [AT/DE] Moving from Austria to Germany

Post by ellaellela »

Thank you both for the input. I was not aware that moving to a different broker (outside of Austria) might trigger a capital gains tax >< And from the looks of it, it seems that there are some additional hoops to jump through if you want to do it cleanly...

So, I will go with the first option: sell all at the Austrian broker pay the capital gains tax and start again with the German broker. Now I just need to figure out how to sell on flatex website xD
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