ETF withholding tax?

If I invest in a German domiciled ETF, Is there a withholding tax on dividends? I am Irish resident.

I think in theory, yes the DWT will be 26.375 % but that might depend on who your broker is as I believe that the broker's actually deduct the DWT and forward it to the relevant authorities.

I use a broker in France, and they do not deduct any DWT on my ETFs

Thanks for the reply. I’m using DEGIRO.

I know the tax rate in Ireland is 41%. If it is case you only get tax credit in Ireland for 15%, and have to reclaim the balance of the tax from German revenue then for me a German domiciled ETF is not worth the effort. I am not willing to go through the admin that is described in separate thread re German shares by Brendan.

The tax on dividends from ETFs is 41% in all cases - it doesn't matter whether DWT is deducted or not

If it is then you get a credit for the tax paid abroad, up to the DTT limit (usually 15%) and can reclaim any over that from the foreign authorities.

As for Degiro, it is not clear to me what DWT the deduct.
For an Irish company, they deducted 25% DWT as I would have expected
I have a French company dividend due shortly, so it will be interesting to see what they deduct - I would expect 12.8% but who knows

It looks like they will deduct 26.5% which is the income tax & social security tax rate for a French resident - as a non-resident, the rate should be 12.8%

They have a web page related to DWT tax https://www.degiro.ie/tax

They say that the tax can sometimes be deducted before they receive the dividend and sometimes they deduct it. As it depends on the type & source of the income payer and the type and residence of the income receiver, I imagine it is difficult to have the correct amount deducted in all, if not most, cases

The key point though as Brendan’s thread highlights the significance of the admin burden of reclaiming part of the dwt.

I can now confirm that Degiro have indeed deducted DWT at a rate of 26.5% (in fact a bit more, but I am querying that) so now I will have to reclaim the overpaid amount form the French next year

FintanJ said:

The key point though as Brendan’s thread highlights the significance of the admin burden of reclaiming part of the dwt.

Click to expand...

This is due to the number of possibilities the intermediaries would have to cater for - even if the EU step in to mandate an automatic system, this would entail 27 x 27 different possible interactions between the source and destination tax regimes.

Of course, if there was a unified tax system across the EU ....

Covered in more detail in this thread


If you have the "right" sort of income then you can get a credit for DWT in Ireland however, a UCITs ETF or Irish Unit Linked policy from a Life Assurance company is the "wrong" sort of income and typically results in marginal tax rates of around 49.85% as we set out in our tax guide here