Tax on Foreign Broker Income in Serbia: Shares and Dividends (IBKR, eToro)

Trading through Interactive Brokers, eToro, Revolut or similar platforms? A foreign broker will not calculate or pay your Serbian tax: that obligation is entirely yours. In practice this means two kinds of filings, capital gains when you sell and dividends when they land in your account. Here is how it works.

Selling shares: capital gains

When you sell shares or other securities at a profit, you pay capital gains tax at 15% on the difference between the sale and purchase price. The return is filed electronically on form PPDG-3R, twice a year: within 30 days of the end of the half-year in which the sale occurred. The same principle applies to cryptocurrency.

Foreign dividends

Dividends paid by a foreign company or received through a foreign broker are generally taxed at 15%, and you are required to report the income in Serbia yourself. If tax was already withheld abroad, for example US withholding tax on dividends, it can be credited under the applicable double taxation treaty, so the same income is not fully taxed twice.

What documentation you need

• An activity statement from the platform, ideally for the whole year.
• Dividend confirmations and proof of tax withheld abroad.
• Deposit and withdrawal history, for matching purchase prices.

Platforms like Interactive Brokers produce detailed reports we know how to read: we reconstruct purchase prices, match currencies and calculate the gain in dinars at the prescribed exchange rates.

Common misconceptions

• I did not transfer the money to Serbia, so there is no tax. Wrong: the taxable event is the sale, not the transfer.
• The broker reported everything. A foreign broker does not report to the Serbian Tax Administration on your behalf.
• I will report everything at year-end. Capital gains are reported after each half-year, within 30 days, not only at year-end.

Leave the filings to us

We specialize in investors with domestic and foreign brokers: send us the statement, we calculate, offset losses and file on time. See our capital gains tax filing service and book a conversation, especially if a deadline is already running.