Taxes on futures transactions: Treasury ruins investors

Dhe past year is likely to have given some private investors a huge shock, beyond the lousy price development. Anyone who trades in contracts for difference, better known as CFDs, is prepared for the treasury more terror. CFDs make it possible to trade stocks, indices, currencies or commodities with leverage. This means that the full purchase price for the underlying asset is not paid, only collateral is deposited. This is 20 percent of the value for shares and 5 percent for indices.

This means that with a capital investment of 1000 euros, for example, you can bet on the performance of a 5000 euro share or 20,000 euro index value. They are quite popular with investors with an affinity for the stock market. According to their own statements, many use them to secure their securities accounts. The CFD association has almost 300,000 accounts in Germany; with an average of 2.2 accounts per investor, that’s around 136,000 people.