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Tax Reporting

Anlage KAP for Foreign Brokers — Reporting Dividends & Interest as a German Investor

If every euro of your investment income runs through a German bank, Anlage KAP is mostly a formality — Abgeltungsteuer was already withheld at source, and the form just reconciles what your bank already reported. If you invest through Interactive Brokers, DEGIRO, or any other non-German broker, none of that happens automatically. No withholding, no pre-filled data, no reconciliation. You are the withholding agent now, and the form doesn't make that obvious.

The one distinction that matters: Anlage KAP has two separate sections depending on whether German tax was already withheld at source. Foreign-broker income almost always belongs in the section for income without domestic withholding — using the wrong section is the most common mistake here.

Two sections, and foreign brokers only use one

Anlage KAP splits capital income into two branches. Zeilen 7–15 cover income where a German institution already applied Kapitalertragsteuer — you're just confirming numbers your bank already sent to the Finanzamt. Zeilen 18–26a cover capital income without domestic withholding — which is where every dividend and interest payment from a non-German broker lands, because no German institution ever touched that money to withhold anything from it.

If you hold accounts at both a German bank and a foreign broker, you may genuinely need both sections in the same filing. But for a foreign-only setup, everything goes in 18–26a.

The two lines that actually carry your numbers

Zeile 18 is the gross total of your capital income without domestic withholding — dividends and interest combined, before any foreign tax is subtracted. This is not the after-tax amount you actually received; it's the full gross figure.

Zeile 41 is where the foreign withholding tax you can credit goes — anzurechnende ausländische Quellensteuer. If a US broker withheld 15% on a dividend under the US–Germany tax treaty, that withheld amount is what gets entered here, crediting it against your German tax liability instead of taxing the same income twice.

Example: €1,200 in dividends and €150 in interest from a US broker in one year, with €90 in US withholding tax on the dividends. Zeile 18 gets €1,350 (the gross total). Zeile 41 gets €90 (the creditable withholding). The two numbers aren't netted against each other on the form — they go in separately, and the calculation happens downstream.

What Anlage KAP does not cover here

Two things trip people up specifically because they look like they should be on the same form:

Capital gains from selling shares have their own lines (Zeilen 20–21) and their own calculation, entirely separate from the dividend/interest total in Zeile 18. Don't fold realized gains or losses into the same figure — they're reported, and often taxed, differently.

Fund and ETF income is a bigger trap. If part of your foreign-broker portfolio is ETFs or mutual funds, some or all of that income is affected by the Teilfreistellung (partial exemption) and generally belongs on the separate Anlage KAP-INV, not mixed into the ordinary Anlage KAP lines used for individual stock dividends and interest. Treating fund distributions exactly like a stock dividend on Zeile 18 overstates your taxable income by ignoring an exemption you're entitled to.

This is a mapping, not a filing. Anlage KAP's exact line numbers can shift from one Steuererklärung to the next. Treat this as the current shape of the form, not a permanent reference — verify against the current year's form or your Steuerberater before you file.
Zyvo tracks dividends, interest, and foreign withholding tax per transaction, then maps the totals directly onto Zeile 18 and Zeile 41 for German filers — no manual re-adding across broker statements. Try it in the live demo →
Related reading: Best portfolio trackers with tax reporting · How to track a portfolio across multiple brokers