Reminder: Dont stake in Germany (for now)

Yesterday the discussion came up in another thread and I have the feeling many fellow german investors miss a crucial fact on staking and our tax system. Staking in general is great and this sub is encouraging it a lot, with good reasons.

However german tax law has a crucial rule if you staked or lend you coins. Usually CC are handled as private sales (Privates Veräußerungsgeschäft) and they are taxed at your personal tax rate within 1 year and completely tax free afterwards. If you stake or lend your crypo away, THESE crypto you staked or lended are considered an asset you used to earn money. This increases the tax free period to 10 years (not a typo) and it also applies your personal tax rate (up to 42%).

This can be crucial if your staked coins increase in price, example:

100 Ada bought at 1€ going to 10€ after a year: You sell for 1000€ and pay no tax. You made 900€

But if you staked that ADA you may have gotten 5 ADA which gave you an additional profit of 50€. However when you sell your initial ADA for 1000€ and have to pay 378€ in taxes, which makes you earn a total of only 572€. You actually earned 328€ less then just hodling.

Of course this is dependend on each case, but I think in the end we all hope for another increase in price. I would stay away from staking or lending until this (in my opinion) broken tax rule is fixed or clarified. This is indeed still up for debate as the tax rule applied here was not made for crypto, however many tax offices confirmed this rule to customers asking for clarification.

This is no financial or tax advice.

Some source: https://www.heise.de/news/Fuer-Proof-of-Stake-genutztes-Kryptogeld-erst-nach-10-Jahren-steuerfrei-6114198.html

Edit: I initally statet private sales are taxed at 25%, this was wrong. However it was not relevant in this post or calculations. Sorry, I mistaken this with stock taxes.

Edit 2: Its hilarious but also worrying how many comments go the "how would they know" route and simply propose tax evasion. Did you think about this for a second?