What you actually keep in Germany
| Company revenue | UK resident | Standard rates |
|---|---|---|
| £60,000 | £46,831 | £37,739-£9,092 |
| £100,000 | £66,668 | £59,590-£7,078 |
| £150,000 | £87,303 | £86,647-£656 |
| £250,000 | £130,448 | £140,761+£10,313 |
Every figure above is a separate call to the same engine the calculator uses, run at build time on 2026-08-12. The green column is the best available outcome at that income.
The Germany options, priced
- Standard rates. Ordinary German income tax plus solidarity surcharge, with dividends generally under the flat Abgeltungsteuer.
Germany has one regime to model here, which makes the structure and the residency date the only levers that matter.
What actually moves the number
- German dividend taxation is a flat rate rather than the progressive scale, which is why the result is flatter across incomes than you expect.
- Church tax is optional in the sense that it depends on registration, and the engine does not include it.
- Germany has no split-year treatment, so the year of the move is usually taxed on an arrival-date basis by concession rather than by right.
When Germany starts taxing you
A residence available to you in Germany, or a habitual abode of more than six months. Having a flat you could live in is enough, whether or not you are in it.
The other half is the UK side. Leaving the UK tax net is the Statutory Residence Test, and running a UK company from outside the UK raises Central Management and Control and Permanent Establishment questions that are separate from your own residence. Running a UK limited company while living abroad covers both.
What this calculation assumes
- The company is assumed to distribute everything it can in the same year, after a director salary at the UK National Insurance threshold. Leaving profit in the company, or paying into a pension from it, changes the answer and is usually worth modelling.
- Corporation tax is charged at UK rates throughout, because a company incorporated in the UK stays UK tax resident wherever its director lives.
- Cross-border scenario detected. Check the applicable double-tax treaty between United Kingdom and Germany.
- Source-country (United Kingdom) dividend withholding tax of 0% applied on the gross dividend; a foreign tax credit is granted in Germany up to the residence-country liability (relief under the applicable double-tax treaty).
- Single-filer (Grundtarif) bands in taxable space (zvE minus the EUR 12,096 Grundfreibetrag). The 32a EStG progression zones 2 and 3 are CONTINUOUS quadratics, not flat rates, so they are modelled as 8 + 16 piecewise-linear segments whose rate is the exact chord slope -- cumulative tax is exact at every segment boundary and at most ~EUR 4.50 high mid-segment (chord over a convex curve). Zones 4 (42% to zvE 277,825) and 5 (45%) are linear and exact. Employee social security applies SPLIT ceilings: pension+unemployment 10.6% to the EUR 96,600 Beitragsbemessungsgrenze, health+care 10.35% to EUR 66,150. Solidarity surcharge modelled on employment income (5.5% above the EUR 19,950 Freigrenze, 11.9% taper) and already included in the 26.375% dividend rate. Church tax optional; joint filing (Splittingtarif), Gewerbesteuer and family variation not modelled.
The last items are the engine's own disclosures, reproduced rather than summarised. Where a regime is not modelled it is named as not modelled, because a caveat you have to go looking for is not a caveat.