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Germany – Australia · Source editionArticle 10 Dividends

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(1)

(1) Dividends paid by a company which is a resident of a Contracting State to a resident of the other Contracting State may be taxed in that other State.

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(2)

(2) However, such dividends may also be taxed in the Contracting State of which the company paying the dividends is a resident and according to the laws of that State, but if the beneficial owner of the dividends is a resident of the other Contracting State, the tax so charged shall not exceed: a) 5 per cent of the gross amount of the dividends, if the bene- ficial owner of the dividends is a company (other than a partnership) which holds directly at least 10 per cent of the voting power of the company paying the dividends through- out a 6 month period that includes the day of payment of the dividend; b) 15 per cent of the gross amount of the dividends in all other cases. In the case of dividends paid by a German Real Estate Aktien - gesellschaft with listed share capital, only subparagraph b) ap- plies. This paragraph shall not affect the taxation of the company in respect of the profits out of which the dividends are paid.

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(3)

(3) Notwithstanding the provisions of paragraph 2, dividends shall not be taxed in the Contracting State of which the company paying the dividends is a resident if the beneficial owner of the dividends is a company (other than a partnership) that is a resi- dent of the other Contracting State that has held directly shares representing 80 per cent or more of the voting power of the com- pany paying the dividends for a 12 month period ending on the date the dividend is declared and the company that is the bene- ficial owner of the dividends: a) has its principal class of shares listed on a recognised stock exchange specified in sub-subparagraph 1(m)i) or ii) of Arti- cle 3 and regularly traded on one or more recognised stock exchanges; b) is owned directly or indirectly by one or more companies (provided that where the beneficial owner company is so owned indirectly, each intermediate company is a resident of a Contracting State or a company referred to in sub-subpara- graph ii)): i) whose principal class of shares is listed on a recognised stock exchange specified in sub-subparagraph 1(m)i) or ii) of Article 3 and regularly traded on one or more recog- nised stock exchanges; or ii) each of which, if it directly held the shares in respect of which the dividends are paid, would be entitled to equivalent benefits in respect of such dividends under a tax treaty between the State of which that company is a resident and the Contracting State of which the company paying the dividends is a resident; or c) does not meet the requirements of subparagraphs a) or b) of this paragraph but the competent authority of the first- mentioned Contracting State determines that the conditions of paragraph 2 of Article 23 are not met. The competent authority of the first-mentioned Contracting State shall consult the competent authority of the other Contracting State before refusing to grant benefits of this Agreement under this subparagraph.

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(4)

(4) The term “dividends” as used in this Article means income from shares or other rights, not being debt-claims, participating in profits, as well as other amounts which are subjected to the same taxation treatment as income from shares by the laws of the Contracting State of which the company making the distri- bution is a resident for the purposes of its tax, and shall include, in the case of the Federal Republic of Germany, distributions on certificates of a German collective investment vehicle.

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(5)

(5) The provisions of paragraphs 1, 2 and 3 shall not apply if the beneficial owner of the dividends, being a resident of a Con- tracting State, carries on business in the other Contracting State of which the company paying the dividends is a resident, through a permanent establishment situated therein and the holding in respect of which the dividends are paid is effectively connected with such permanent establishment. In such case the provisions of Article 7 shall apply.

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(6)

(6) Where a company which is a resident of a Contracting State derives profits or income from the other Contracting State, that other State may not impose any tax on the dividends paid by the company – being dividends beneficially owned by a per- son who is not a resident of the other Contracting State – except insofar as the holding in respect of which such dividends are paid is effectively connected with a permanent establishment situated in that other State, nor subject the company’s undistributed profits to a tax on the company’s undistributed profits, even if the dividends paid or the undistributed profits consist wholly or partly of profits or income arising in such other State.

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(7)

(7) Notwithstanding paragraph 6, dividends paid by a com - pany that is deemed to be a resident only of one Contracting State pursuant to paragraph 3 of Article 4 may be taxed in the other Contracting State, but only to the extent that the underlying profits arising in that State out of which the dividends are paid are not subject to tax at the corporate level. Where such divi- dends are beneficially owned by a resident of the first-mentioned State, paragraph 2 of this Article shall apply as if the company paying the dividends were a resident only of the other State.

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Source, edition and limits
Source edition
de-australia-2016-base | BGBl. 2016 II S. 1114 | Signed: 2015-11-12 | Gazette publication: 2016-10-17
Source form
official-publication PDF with native text layer; reader is a machine transcription
Source scope
original implementing law, bilingual base treaty and accompanying protocol; not a current consolidated text
Retrieved
2026-09-30
Text and language scope
German and English versions are present in the source and are identified by the signing clause. Unreviewed coordinate-based machine transcription of this original source edition only. Printed line breaks, hyphens and uncertain token spacing are retained, not silently corrected. Treaty preamble, closing formula, protocol and shared signatures are separate retained assets, not part of the last article. Full supplements: /review/de-australia-2016-base/. PDF page links identify pages, not verified paragraph correspondence.
Review status
Pending human wording, completeness, source-authority, currentness, alignment and rendering review. No legal review performed.
Currentness
Original source edition; not a verified current-law consolidation. Unknown. No current-law consolidation, effective-period determination, MLI application, or complete amendment-chain verification has been performed. Original publication year is not a current applicability date. Bounded agent triage, no qualified wording/alignment/legal review. No exhaustive verification of all later 2026 developments. Matching digest proves retained source identity, not legal force.
Protocols and later instruments
The protocol printed with this agreement is separately preserved in source supplements; it has not been merged into treaty articles. Subsequent protocols, amendments, MLI effects, replacements and suspensions are unresolved. This is not a consolidated current-law instrument. Source-triage warnings: Bounded agent triage, no qualified wording/alignment/legal review. No exhaustive verification of all later 2026 developments. Matching digest proves retained source identity, not legal force.
Text language and status
en · authentic-language-transcription · machine-transcription
Citation
BGBl. 2016 II S. 1114
SHA-256
d58aaf6b2bd90a6abde579523b333041459f4e6c76a0fed3a730e1b9f01122a9

Citation

Copyable citation

BGBl. 2016 II S. 1114 | de-australia-2016-base | de-australia-2016-base | BGBl. 2016 II S. 1114 | Signed: 2015-11-12 | Gazette publication: 2016-10-17 | Article 10 | en | Pending human wording, completeness, source-authority, currentness, alignment and rendering review. No legal review performed. | /library/treaties/de-australia-2016-base/en/articles/article-10/

Disclaimers

Language switching retains matching article and paragraph identifiers. The mapping does not confirm reviewed legal or translational equivalence.

BGBl. 2016 II S. 1114

Unreviewed machine transcription. Not a verified current-law consolidation or legal advice. Later changes may be missing.

Source details · Preamble and protocol

Source-page links are references, not human paragraph verification.

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