Hold physical gold or silver for more than twelve months and the gain is free of tax when you sell. The basis is §23 EStG. Sell within the period and the gain is taxable — but a €1,000 exemption limit per calendar year applies across all private disposals combined.
What counts is the date of acquisition, not of payment or delivery. In practice the tax authorities use the invoice date. The period runs out after exactly twelve months; sell on the same calendar day one year later and it has not yet been met.
An example: buy on 12 March 2026, sell from 13 March 2027 onwards — the gain is then tax-free. A sale on 12 March 2027 would still be taxable.
Keep purchase invoices permanently. Without proof of the acquisition date you cannot demonstrate to the tax office that the holding period was met.
What is taxable is the difference between the sale price and the acquisition cost, less expenses such as shipping or assay fees. The gain is taxed at your personal income tax rate, not at the flat withholding rate.
Important: the €1,000 is an exemption limit, not an allowance. At €999 of gain you pay nothing; at €1,000 you pay tax on the full amount. All private disposals in the year count towards that total — including crypto gains.
If you buy over several years, you hold stock with different acquisition dates. Sell only part of it and you have to allocate which pieces are affected. The recognised method is FIFO: the oldest pieces count as sold first — usually the better outcome for tax, because the period is most likely to have been met there.
With serial-numbered bars you can even document the allocation piece by piece. Note the serial number alongside the invoice date and the calculation becomes unambiguous.
If you paid for the gold with Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency, two periods run in parallel: one for the coins you spent, and a fresh one for the gold you acquired. The swap itself is a disposal of the crypto; for the gold, the twelve-month clock starts anew on the day of acquisition.
More than twelve months. Once that holding period under §23 EStG has passed, gains from selling physical gold and silver are entirely free of income tax, however large.
Yes, the same twelve-month period applies to silver, platinum and palladium. The difference from gold lies only in VAT at the moment of purchase, not in income tax at the moment of sale.
€1,000 per calendar year across all private disposals combined. It is an exemption limit: reach it and the entire gain becomes taxable.
The purchase invoice with the date and amount, plus the sale receipt. With several purchases, a traceable FIFO schedule; for bars, ideally the serial number.
Legal position as at July 2026 for private individuals with unlimited tax liability in Germany. General information, not tax advice.