It would be good if someone could help me with the following questions.
1. Is Maxblue worth opening a Depot there, or are there some critical no-goes?
2. How hard is it to pay taxes for steuerhässlich ETF and to avoid double taxation? I read bunch of articles and watched YouTube videos in German but it was hard to understand everything.
3. Will "free 801eur" rule apply for the ETF I mentioned and will I need to apply for the Freistellungsauftrag?
4. Should I maybe rather wait a couple of months and open Depot in January 2018 to avoid problems with steuerhässlich ETF?
5. What bonds would be considered as a good option to invest with low risk?
1. I have no experience with Maxblue, but from what I have heard, they are fine.
2. If the ETF in question publishes its retained earnings in the Bundesanzeiger (
and it appears that this one does), it is not that hard but still annoying.
Ideally, your bank will inform you about the earnings in your Steuerbescheinigung. If not, you find them in the Bundesanzeiger. You need to do a tax return and then you will be taxed on the earnings.
You are right that this issue should go away in 2018. Unless the law gets changed again. But be aware that you will be paying "Vorabpauschalen" on accumulative funds and once again you should make sure to keep all documentation about those or, once again, you will be taxed twice.
You could consider IE00BK1PV551 instead, which is distributing. My personal feeling is that distributing funds will sufficiently simplify my life tax-wise that it is worth having to reinvest some distributions manually (and having to pay effectively slightly higher taxes).
3. It applies, but for an accumulative fund, a Freistellungsauftrag is useless (because the bank does not tax anything for you anyway). So you don't need one. When the tax office processes your tax return, they will subtract 801€ from your earnings automatically. If you go for a distributing fund, you should give the bank a Freistellungsauftrag.
4. I personally would not wait, but I have done this before. Since you have not, I think waiting would be the smart idea.
5. Usually, the answer is "short-term government bonds of a country that is unlikely to collapse". Unfortunately, those will probably give you negative or zero returns. I am currently using a combination of a long-term German federal government bond (DE0001135481) and Tagesgeld/Festgeld.
[Addition that occurred to me after posting]
Starting in 2018 when accumulating funds will be taxed via the Vorabpauschale, a distributing fund should actually have a tax-advantage: You will be taxed on the full distribution each year. But as long as your total capital earnings are below 801€ for the year, the tax rate will be zero. With an accumulating fund, you will be taxed via Vorabpauschale which should be less than the distributions of a comparable distributing fund. The rest will be taxed once you sell the fund.
So, the distributing fund will have a slight tax-advantage, unless
- your tax rate in retirement will be 0 or
- you already have more than 801€ capital earnings.