StoFöG Raises the § 6b Roll-Over Limit to EUR 2 Million

Selling a stake held as business assets often triggered an immediate tax bill the moment the sale closed. Under § 6b Abs. 10 EStG, the Standortfördergesetz (StoFöG) has raised the roll-over ceiling from EUR 500,000 to EUR 2,000,000 per taxpayer, in force for fiscal years beginning after the law's promulgation in BGBl I 2026 (5 February 2026).

The mechanics stay the same: the realized gain reduces the acquisition cost of the replacement asset (newly acquired Kapitalgesellschafts-Anteile, depreciable movable business assets, or buildings), which defers taxation via lower depreciation or a later sale. The reinvestment window is the year of sale plus two fiscal years (shares, movables) or four years (buildings).

The quadrupled ceiling is only useful if you actually qualify. § 6b Abs. 10 explicitly excludes corporations, Personenvereinigungen, and Vermögensmassen. A holding GmbH does not need Abs. 10 anyway: § 8b Abs. 2 KStG automatically exempts 95 percent of the share-sale gain at the corporate level. Stakes in private assets are not in scope either — qualified holdings (≥ 1 percent, § 17 EStG) and smaller stakes (§ 20 Abs. 2 EStG) each follow their own regime.

The real beneficiaries are Einzelunternehmer and Mitunternehmer of gewerblich tätigen oder gewerblich geprägten Personengesellschaften whose stakes sit in Betriebsvermögen. Serial investors running a trading business, family-office partnerships, and gewerblich geprägte PE-fund structures are the natural fit; vermögensverwaltende Fonds are out. In the founder structures I see most often, the holding GmbH already captures the tax advantage under § 8b KStG, so StoFöG's roll-over uplift rarely changes the answer.

What to do: Before an exit, have your advisor map whether your stake sits in Privatvermögen, a holding Körperschaft, or the business assets of a Personenunternehmen. Only the third case unlocks the new EUR 2 million ceiling.