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ETF Savings Plan Calculator
Geschrieben von
Janine El-Saghir
Finanzanalystin & Wirtschaftsredakteurin
Dr. Janine El-Saghir ist eine erfahrene Finanzanalystin und Wirtschaftsredakteurin, die sich darauf spezialisiert hat, komplexe Finanzthemen für Anleger verständlich aufzubereiten. Mit über 16 Jahren Erfahrung...
- With the calculator’s defaults – €5,000 to start, €250 a month, 20 years, 7% return, 0.2% TER – the plan ends at €147,241.28. At 2% inflation that is €99,089.16 in today’s money.
- With German tax applied (equity ETF, saver’s allowance of €1,000, no church tax) €135,631.17 remain. The calculator deducts the annual Vorabpauschale, the 30% partial exemption and the allowance year by year – not a flat rate at the end.
- The Vorabpauschale for 2026 is at most 3.20% × 0.7 = 2.24% of the fund value as a tax base. In the example the allowance absorbs it completely for twelve years; the first actual tax falls due in year 13.
- 1.2 percentage points more TER cost €21,252.66 of final value in this example – more than a third of the €65,000 paid in.
Plan, tax, inflation: the three layers of the calculator
The calculator works in two stages. At the top are the figures of any savings plan: initial investment, contribution, interval (monthly or yearly), investment period from 1 to 40 years, the expected annual return up to 12% and the fund’s ongoing cost (TER), which it deducts from the return. It compounds monthly at one twelfth of the annual rate; a yearly contribution is spread across twelve months. For a plan built on interest rather than an ETF, the savings calculator runs the same arithmetic.
Under “More settings” sits the second stage: a switch “Apply taxes / Pre-tax”, the fund type for the partial exemption, accumulating or distributing, church tax, the saver’s allowance, the base rate for the Vorabpauschale, a contribution increase, a holding period after the last contribution and an inflation rate for the real value. It returns final value, total invested, gross value, tax and real value, a chart and a year-by-year table, all to the cent.
The default example: €250 a month for 20 years
The defaults: €5,000 already invested, €250 a month, 20 years, 7% expected return before costs, 0.2% TER, an accumulating equity ETF, 2% inflation. Total contributions come to €65,000.
| Output | Pre-tax | With tax |
|---|---|---|
| Total invested | €65,000.00 | €65,000.00 |
| Gross value | €147,241.28 | €146,209.67 |
| Tax on gains | – | €11,429.55 |
| Final value | €147,241.28 | €135,631.17 |
| Real value in today’s money | €99,089.16 | €91,275.89 |
| Own calculation using the calculator’s logic (monthly compounding, tax on the Vorabpauschale and on the gain at sale), as at 2 September 2026, base rate published by the Federal Ministry of Finance for 2 January 2026. | ||
The gross value is €1,031.61 lower with tax although nothing has been sold. That is the Vorabpauschale: the calculator takes the annual tax on it out of the portfolio, as your broker debits it from your settlement account – and that money stops compounding. Of the €11,429.55 total tax only €851.05 fall due during the 20 years; the remaining €10,578.49 are charged on the sale.
The Vorabpauschale: tax on gains still inside the fund
An accumulating ETF pays nothing out, so without a special rule there would be nothing to tax for decades. Since 2018 section 18 of the German Investment Tax Act (Investmentsteuergesetz, InvStG) therefore sets a notional minimum return each year, the base return (Basisertrag): the fund value at the start of the year multiplied by 70% of a base rate that the Federal Ministry of Finance derives every year from federal bond yields. For 2026 the base rate is 3.20%, so the effective factor is 2.24% of the fund value.
Three rules cap it. The base return is limited to the actual increase in value of the year – in a loss year there is no Vorabpauschale. Distributions paid during the year are deducted. And the tax is deemed received on the first working day of the following year, for 2026 on 4 January 2027. When you eventually sell, every Vorabpauschale already taxed is deducted from the gain (section 19 (1) InvStG) – it is an advance payment, not an additional tax. There is no English term for it; your broker’s statements use the German word.
In the example the first year’s Vorabpauschale is €5,000 × 3.20% × 0.7 = €112. After the partial exemption €78.40 are taxable, and those disappear into the saver’s allowance. This continues for twelve years: only in year 13, at a portfolio value of roughly €67,000, does the partially exempt Vorabpauschale exceed the €1,000, and the calculator shows €13.41 of tax. Over 20 years the Vorabpauschalen add up to €22,483.91, all of which reduce the gain at sale.
Set the base rate to 0 and no Vorabpauschale arises – and the total tax rises from €11,429.55 to €14,920.05. The reason: without it, the saver’s allowance sits unused for twenty years and is deducted only once at the end. With it, a slice of the gain uses up the allowance tax-free every year. If your bank holds an exemption order (Freistellungsauftrag), the Vorabpauschale therefore earns you allowance year after year – provided interest or dividends elsewhere have not already used it up.
Partial exemption, allowance, church tax
Nobody pays the full 26.375% (25% withholding tax plus solidarity surcharge) on fund income. Section 20 InvStG exempts 30% of the income of equity funds, 15% for mixed funds and nothing for bond funds; the calculator picks the rate from the fund type. The saver’s allowance (Sparer-Pauschbetrag) of €1,000 per person (€2,000 for jointly assessed spouses) is applied in the calculator every year, first to distributions, then to the Vorabpauschale, and at sale to the gain.
Two variants of the example:
- Without the allowance (select “None”): €13,975.82 of tax instead of €11,429.55, an extra €2,546.27. That is the situation without an exemption order – your bank then withholds from the first euro, and you reclaim the difference through a tax return.
- With 9% church tax: €12,119.30 of tax, €689.75 more. The combined rate rises to 27.9951%, not 28.3%, because church tax reduces its own tax base.
The allowance in the calculator applies to this one plan. If you also receive interest or dividends, part or all of it is already used – then “None” is the more honest setting. How the exemption order works and why it needs a German tax ID is explained next to the capital gains tax calculator.
Distributing or accumulating
With “Distributing” the calculator pays out the chosen distribution yield on the fund value at the start of each year – the default is 2%, typical for equity ETFs is 1.5 to 2.5%. Distributions are taxed on receipt and not reinvested; the calculator shows them as a separate total.
In the example the distributing ETF ends at €109,145.16 final value plus €17,182.03 of distributions after tax, €126,327.19 in total – against €135,631.17 for the accumulating one. The €9,303.98 difference is the compounding the paid-out income no longer produced. The Vorabpauschale shrinks to €2,092.01 because the distributions almost fully absorb it.
Contribution increase and holding period
The contribution increase raises the contribution by a percentage, yearly or every two to five years. With 2% a year the contributions in the example rise to €77,892.11 and the final value after tax to €155,040.35: €12,892.11 more paid in, €19,409.18 more out – the early increases work the longest.
The holding period is the time after the last contribution during which the capital stays invested. Ten years of it after 20 years of saving turn €135,631.17 into €253,209.60 after tax, without another euro paid in. That answers the question whether a plan started at 35 and stopped at 55 is worth it: the ten years afterwards earn more than the twenty before – the mechanism the compound interest calculator isolates.
Real value: what €147,000 buys in 20 years
The inflation switch is on by default at 2%, the European Central Bank’s target. It does not change the final value; it converts it into today’s purchasing power: €147,241.28 become €99,089.16, €135,631.17 after tax become €91,275.89. A third of the nominal result is inflation.
How real that arithmetic is, the European securities regulator ESMA shows with an average fund portfolio: €10,000 invested at the start of 2020 were worth €12,207 nominally at the end of 2024 – and €9,956 after inflation. A nominal gain, a real loss. Set a savings target in today’s money and use the real value as the yardstick; the purchasing-power loss of a fixed amount is what the inflation calculator works out.
TER and broker: where the costs sit
The TER is never debited; it is taken out of the fund’s assets every day, and the calculator deducts it from the return. Replace the 0.2% with the 1.4% an actively managed equity fund costs on average in the EU, and the pre-tax final value drops from €147,241.28 to €125,988.62. €21,252.66 for 1.2 percentage points – a third of everything paid in. The full comparison of ETF against active fund, entry charge included, is in the German-language ETF-Fondsrechner.
What the broker charges is not in the calculator: execution fees per contribution, order fees, custody fees and the spread. These differ considerably between providers and are listed in the ETF broker comparison. Over a 20-year plan, a difference in TER almost always outweighs an execution fee.
What the calculator simplifies
- Constant return and constant base rate. Both fluctuate in reality; the result is a model, not a forecast.
- Contributions made during the year are ignored for that year’s Vorabpauschale. The law reduces it by one twelfth per full month before the purchase (section 18 (2) InvStG); the calculator rounds to zero.
- The tax on the Vorabpauschale is taken from the portfolio value. In practice the bank debits your settlement account; the result is the same.
- The allowance applies only within this plan. Other investment income, loss offsetting and the option to be taxed at your personal rate are not modelled.
- No broker costs, no reinvestment of distributions.
- German tax residents only. With a broker abroad, you declare the income yourself, Vorabpauschale included.
This calculation does not replace individual tax advice.
Sources
- German Investment Tax Act: section 18 InvStG (Vorabpauschale, base return, cap, deemed receipt), section 19 InvStG (Vorabpauschalen reduce the gain at sale) and section 20 InvStG (partial exemption) – retrieved 2 September 2026, German only
- Federal Ministry of Finance: circular of 13 January 2026, IV C 1 – S 1980/00230/012/001 – base rate for the Vorabpauschale as at 2 January 2026: 3.20%
- German Income Tax Act: section 20 EStG (saver’s allowance) and section 32d EStG (tax rate, church tax reduction) – retrieved 2 September 2026, German only
- ESMA: Market Report on Costs and Performance of EU Retail Investment Products 2025 (ongoing costs of equity ETFs and active equity funds, real value of a €10,000 portfolio 2020–2024) – published March 2026, retrieved 2 September 2026
Frequently asked questions
An ETF savings plan calculator is a digital tool that simulates different scenarios for wealth accumulation. The outcome is an estimate based on the initial investment, the savings rate, the investment horizon, and the assumed dividend yield and price appreciation. Based on these assumptions, the tool estimates how invested capital may evolve.
Yes. The calculator can simulate both ETF savings plans and one-time ETF investments. This allows different investment strategies to be compared.
An ETF savings plan is an investment plan in which money is contributed regularly to an ETF. Over many years, investors can gradually build wealth through these regular investments.
Yes. The calculator can simulate a complete ETF savings plan. Savings rate, investment horizon, and assumed returns can be adjusted to analyze different investment scenarios.
Future ETF returns depend on the performance of the underlying markets. They cannot be predicted with certainty. Calculators, therefore, use assumed return values to simulate possible scenarios rather than providing precise forecasts.
Many ETFs contain companies that regularly pay dividends. These dividends can either be paid out to investors or automatically reinvested. Dividends, therefore, represent a potential component of the total return of an ETF investment.
Distributing ETFs pay the dividends and interest of the securities they hold out to investors at regular intervals – price gains are not distributed, they stay in the unit price. Accumulating ETFs reinvest that income inside the fund automatically. The calculator models both: with “Distributing” it pays out the chosen distribution yield every year and taxes it immediately, with “Accumulating” everything stays invested and the annual Vorabpauschale applies.
ETFs invest in a large number of companies that make up a specific index. Many of these companies distribute part of their profits to shareholders as dividends. When an ETF holds shares in these companies, it receives dividend payments from its portfolio, which may then be passed on to investors.