r/europe • u/paneuropeanism_ Europe • 13h ago

News Von der Leyen: €300 billion in European savings flown overseas every year, primarily to the US, will be invested in Europe from now on. All 27 EU states agreed to establish the S&I Union, a step toward the full Capital Market Union

https://streamable.com/4h43qk
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u/Diddly_eyed_Dipshite Ireland 12h ago

So does this mean theyre going to change the taxation on capital gains too? Currently its super confusing between different EU countries, and with some brokers you need to sell your entire portfolio and rebuy if you move country which isnt any good, investment tax ranges from 0% to 35%.

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u/kenyard 9h ago

The tax is the same regardless if you invest in Europe or us.

You are correct the taxation is weird though for people who move around

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u/throwaway586054 9h ago

>The tax is the same regardless if you invest in Europe or us.

This is incorrect, it really depends of the country, the domiciliation of the funds, stock etc. And your country may have also special taxed products like in France with the PEA or PER.

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u/Zirkulaerkubus 8h ago

Could be changed to less tax for capital gains on EU stocks.

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u/Aggressive_Body834 5h ago

EU can't change national parliamentary taxing prerogatives.

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u/Zirkulaerkubus 5h ago

Not directly.

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u/kenyard 7h ago

That's what they should do to incentivise investing in Europe for sure.

But I think most money is in pension funds and those arent taxed anyway for me at least until drawdown.

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u/RubberPigEnemy 2h ago

This isn't about Pension funds as you can't allocate those freely anyways. This is about retail / individual investment.

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u/Diddly_eyed_Dipshite Ireland 1h ago

Yeah and retail investing is unnecessarily complicated in the EU. I cannot build a retirement portfolio if I move around the EU which is insane. The whole point of investing is not selling amd letting compounding do the work, when you travel around the EU spending a year here, a year there, you need to sell all your holdings and re-buy to start again, it makes no sense.

Its no difference if I'm investing in EU or US stocks but if they want to make investing in EU, and real free travel and work amongst EU citizens, be attractive then they need to change this.

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u/RubberPigEnemy 1h ago

That sounds horrible. Honestly, probably should just open an account in Country A, and then leave it there no matter where you move (but I'm assuming that's the problem - you can't?).

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u/Diddly_eyed_Dipshite Ireland 1h ago

I've actually been doing some thinking and research on it and I think that is the likely option, and if anything seems like a bit of a tax, dare I say, loophole..? I'm in country P with a brokerage account on T212, if I ever move to country B I can open a new brokerage like IBKR, I can leave my current account compound away, or if I do sell off some of it while im in another country, my current tax body in country P has no way of knowing this... seems like an easy though somewhat unethical way to save 28% of my gains from the taxman.

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u/RubberPigEnemy 1h ago

Considering the absolute tax-slavery Europeans have to deal with, I don't see any problem in them not getting a piece of the pie from savings that were already taxed a dozen times before ever making it into the account.

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u/Diddly_eyed_Dipshite Ireland 1h ago

Right? I dont complain about income tax or social security because they genuinely lead to a better society and I feel like are fair taxation. Cap gains though, if I do my research and pick a good stock and put my already taxed money in it, and if it does well, I dont see how my government is deserving of nearly 1/3 of that profit when the company did all the work and I took the risk.

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u/Juandimix 9h ago

Indeed, for example Germany taxes Unrealized gains and the % changes between ETF, Bond, Stock, Crypto, it also taxes differently if the ETF has too many non stock assets, how are they going to standardize everything between countries?

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u/Greedyanda 7h ago

Germany only taxes a portion of unrealised gains from accumulating or low-distributing investment funds and ETFs, not stocks. And this is deducted from your gains when you liquidate them.

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u/Juandimix 4h ago

Ye just checked and you are right about the stocks, somehow I got confused when I saw the dividends from the American Company getting taxed on my bank, but ye even if it is a small %, every Euro counts and losing that bit of compounding on a prepayment of a Tax is kinda ass (we passed the 2k allowance last year).

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u/pengekcs 5h ago

That's really effed up.

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u/TheKensei Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (France) 10h ago

Yeah it should be incentived by tax return