Germany exit tax (Wegzugsteuer, §6 AStG): the real numbers

Germany’s exit is administratively clean and fiscally the harshest in the EU. Two filings move you off the books. One provision, §6 of the Außensteuergesetz, can attach a six-figure assessment to the day you deregister.

The Wegzugsteuer is narrow — it catches shareholders, not earners — but where it applies it applies completely, and it is not negotiable after the fact. This page is the drilldown on the charge itself. For the full departure sequence — Abmeldung, Krankenkasse close-out, the final ESt-Erklärung — see how to leave Germany tax residency.

What §6 AStG actually does

The Wegzugsteuer is a deemed disposal. On the day you cease to be unbeschränkt steuerpflichtig — unrestricted German tax resident — Germany treats your qualifying shareholding as sold at market value, calculates the latent gain, and taxes it. No sale occurs. No cash arrives. The assessment is real anyway.

This is the structural difference between Germany and, say, the UK, which has no classical exit tax and instead taxes gains made while abroad only if you return within five years. Germany does not wait to see what you do next. It charges at the door.

The two conditions

Both must hold. The 1% threshold is strikingly low — far below Spain’s €4M portfolio test or France’s €800,000 — and it is the reason German founders get caught where their Spanish counterparts do not. A 1.2% stake in a well-valued startup is enough.

The contrast at the other end of the range is stark: Portugal levies no personal exit tax at all, and Italy applies one only to businesses migrating their tax seat, not to individuals. The same founder, same cap table, pays a six-figure assessment leaving Munich and nothing leaving Lisbon.

Germany’s 7-of-12-years condition is also a genuine escape hatch that not every regime offers. The Dutch conserverende aanslag applies no minimum-residency test whatsoever, so a recent arrival who would fall outside §6 AStG in Germany is fully inside the Dutch charge.

The word indirect carries weight. Holdings through an intermediate entity are counted through to the ultimate individual, which defeats the common assumption that interposing a holding company has already solved the problem. It usually has not, and structures built for other reasons rarely happen to satisfy §6.

Condition 1 also looks back. §17 EStG counts a stake of 1% or more held at any time in the five years before departure, so a holding that dipped below 1% last year still qualifies. And since 1 January 2025, §19(3) InvStG extends the charge to investment funds: units that stand at a gain are caught if you held 1% or more of the fund in the last five years, or if they cost you €500,000 or more. An employee with a large ETF portfolio and no startup equity can be inside the regime.

Condition 2 exempts more people than expected. Germany has absorbed a large inbound population of founders and senior engineers over the last decade; anyone who arrived in 2020 or later and leaves during 2026 has fewer than seven unrestricted resident years and falls outside the regime entirely.

What it costs

The gain is taxed under the Teileinkünfteverfahren — the partial-income method. Only 60% of the latent gain enters the taxable base, but that 60% is taxed at your personal income-tax rate, up to 45%, plus the 5.5% solidarity surcharge levied on the tax itself.

The arithmetic on a €1,500,000 latent gain, at the top marginal rate:

That is 28.5% of the full gain — and it is a ceiling, not a forecast. It assumes every euro of the taxable portion is taxed at the 45% top rate, which happens when the deemed gain stacks on top of German income that already sits in the top bracket.

Where the deemed gain is the founder’s main income for the year, Germany’s progressive schedule applies the lower brackets first and the assessment lands nearer €407,000, about 27%. The two figures bracket the realistic range:

Model a large German exit at 27–28.5% of the full latent gain. Below roughly €500,000 of gain the effective rate drops further, because a larger share of the taxable portion falls outside the top bracket.

This is also why published figures for the same scenario differ — a quoted “27%” is the progressive, standalone-gain case, while “28.5%” is the stacked-income ceiling. Neither is wrong; they answer different questions.

A worked comparison of the founder cases we see most:

Row three is the case that causes the most damage in practice: a minority holder with no control over a liquidity event, assessed on a gain they cannot realise, with a cash tax bill and no cash.

The 2022 change that removed the escape route

Before 2022, a move within the EU/EEA qualified for indefinite interest-free deferral. The tax was assessed but not collected, and in practice a German founder relocating to Lisbon or Amsterdam could park the charge indefinitely.

The ATAD-Umsetzungsgesetz abolished that. Since 1 January 2022 the tax arises on departure and falls due one month after the assessment notice, regardless of destination — an EU move and a move to Bangkok are treated identically. The remaining relief is under §6(4) AStG: payment in seven equal annual instalments, interest-free, normally granted only against security such as a bank guarantee or insurance bond.

That security requirement is the practical sting. A founder facing a €427,000 assessment does not simply pay it over seven years — they must first post collateral covering the liability, at the exact moment they are funding an international relocation. The instalment plan solves a timing problem, not a liquidity one.

One door stays open, on conditions worth reading in full. If the departure rested on a temporary absence and you become unrestricted German tax resident again within seven years — the shares neither sold nor transferred, distributions below a quarter of their value, and Germany’s taxing right restored at least to its former extent — the tax claim lapses (§6(3) AStG). The Finanzamt can extend that window by up to five years if you still intend to return.

For founders moving to Thailand or Paraguay, nothing was lost in 2022 that they had to begin with: neither destination was ever inside the EU/EEA deferral perimeter. The change hurt intra-EU movers. Third-country movers were always on these terms.

What can still be done

Every route runs through the same constraint: the charge fires when residency ends, so the work happens before the Abmeldung date.

1. Don’t count on selling down. Dropping below 1% just before departure does not help: §17 EStG counts any stake of 1% or more held in the five years before you leave. A sale down changes the answer only if the holding has stayed below 1% for that whole window, and only where the cap table and any shareholder agreement permit it.
2. Pre-move restructuring. Rolling the shareholding into a structure that changes the §6 analysis, executed well ahead of the trigger and documented properly. Legitimate with counsel; German anti-abuse provisions reliably catch versions assembled in the final weeks.
3. Staged exit. Remaining German resident for one additional year while the restructuring completes, then exiting cleanly. One more year of German tax is frequently cheaper than a mishandled §6 trigger.
4. Valuation discipline. The assessment is built on market value at the departure date. A defensible valuation, prepared in advance, is a materially stronger position than a number the Finanzamt reconstructs later.

The equivalent Spanish analysis — different thresholds, same all-or-nothing timing — is in the Spain exit tax guide. For crypto specifically, the crypto section of the Germany exit guide covers the treatment that sits outside §6. For the eight-jurisdiction comparison, see the EU exit tax cheatsheet.

The short version

If you have not held 1% or more of any corporation in the last five years and hold no fund units above the §19 InvStG thresholds, or you have been German-resident for fewer than seven of the last twelve years, §6 AStG is not your concern and your exit is the paperwork sequence in the leaving Germany guide.

If both conditions hold, the assessment is a real number fixed on the day your German residence ends, the deferral route closed in 2022, and the interest-free instalments normally require collateral. That planning belongs with German tax counsel months before the departure date — not in the week you book the flight.

Run the Thailand tax calculator for the destination side, compare the Thailand vs Germany position, or book the free diagnosis call and we will model the §6 exposure against your actual cap table before anything is committed.