| Table | Content | Filling in |
| 5.1 | Taxed interest earned in Estonia — pre-filled in EMTA with our uninvested cash interest, and taxed bond interest payments | Pre-filled |
| 6.1 | Estonian instrument sales. As these are automatically pre-filled in EMTA by NasdaqCSD, you might have to delete these rows from Table 6.1. For users who need to do so, we outline it in their tax report. | Pre-filled |
| 6.5 | Main table for all investment account information. This one you need to fill in manually. Part I — Lightyear information, shown to you in the generated tax report Part II — all payments in and out of your Lightyear investment account which we show you in the tax report. Table 6.5 also requires duplicating information from pre-filled tables:
| Filled in manually |
| 7.1 | Taxed dividends earned in Estonia — pre-filled in EMTA by issuers who make the distributions. | Pre-filled |
| 8.1 | Taxed interest earned outside Estonia. This for Lightyear users means Latvian and Lithuanian bonds’ interest payments. | Submitted automatically from Lightyear |
| 8.2 | Foreign instrument sales. As Latvian and Lithuanian instrument sales are automatically pre-filled in EMTA by NasdaqCSD, you might have to delete these rows from Table 8.2. For users who need to do so, we outline it in their tax report. | Pre-filled |
| 8.8 | Taxed dividends earned outside Estonia, for example US and European stocks’ dividends. You can submit information to this table automatically during your tax report flow. | Submitted automatically from Lightyear |
What’s the difference between the regular system and the investment account system, and declaring taxes within both?
Investing through an investment account is tax efficient, as it allows you to defer income tax liability for any investments bought and sold with the money deposited in an investment account. This means you can buy and sell investments, receive dividend income, and reinvest proceeds — with tax liability deferred until the time you take more money out from the investment account than you have put in.
In the regular system, tax liability arises on every profitable transaction, meaning you also need to declare every transaction. For investment accounts, specific transactions don’t need to be declared. Rather, tax liability arises when the amount of money paid out of your investment accounts exceeds the money paid in. This is calculated by combining payments to and from all your investment accounts.
When declaring your taxes, Lightyear can automatically forward your investment income tax data to EMTA for the regular account regime reporting. For investment accounts, this process is partially manual for 2024 declarations, as EMTA wasn’t able to onboard new providers to their fully automated data forwarding system.
Where can I find the option to create my report?
Here’s how to find the report flow:
- On web: tap on your profile image in the top right corner -> settings -> tax reporting
- On mobile: tap on your profile image in the top left corner -> tap on the three dots next to ‘Investeerimiskonto’ -> tax reporting
Do I need to declare taxes if I didn’t make any investments?
Investment accounts need to be declared every year, even if you haven’t bought or sold anything, or earned interest in 2024. This means that if you want to use your Lightyear account as an investment account going forward, you should also declare your Lightyear investment account in your 2024 tax declaration. In this case - if you haven’t deposited or withdrawn money, nor purchased or sold assets - you’ll have to mark the relevant column in Table 6.5 part I.
What tables do I need to fill in when declaring my investment account?
The tables you need to pay attention to depend on your activity on Lightyear. For investment accounts, the main table for all contributions and withdrawals is 6.5. But keep in mind that the information there needs to be duplicated in other tables, depending on the income type and source.
Here’s an overview of all relevant tables for a Lightyear investment account user:
How do I calculate my initial deposit?
Your initial deposit consists of two parts:
- Investments acquisition cost — the total acquisition cost of investments you held with Lightyear as of 01.01.2024, converted into euros; as well as cash held in Money Market Funds on your Savings balance. The value of repeatedly bought instruments is calculated using your chosen profit and loss method.
- Lightyear cash balance — the total amount of uninvested cash you held as of 01.01.2024, converted into euros.
The calculation for your initial deposit is only shown once, when you first go through this flow — please pay extra attention here, and if needed, take a screenshot of the data. After finishing the flow, you’ll only be able to access this calculation with the help of our customer support team.
Do transactions between investment accounts need to be declared?
No. If you’ve paid into your Lightyear investment account from another investment account, this contribution only needs to be declared once — so the deposit to Lightyear doesn’t need to be declared. The same goes for withdrawals from your Lightyear investment account to another investment account.
How do I declare interest on my uninvested cash?
For the whole 2024 tax year - when Lightyear couldn’t yet offer investment accounts - we withheld income tax on all monthly payments for interest on your uninvested cash and forwarded this tax information to EMTA every month. As the law change allowing us to offer investment accounts only came into effect in December, all 12 of your interest payments have been forwarded.
That means the data for interest on uninvested cash is pre-filled for you in Table 5.1. You’ll however need to also add these interest payments manually into Table 6.5.
How do I declare interest from Savings?
In Savings, your money is invested into Money Market Funds, which make payouts in the form of dividend payments. These don’t need to be declared, as no tax has been withheld on these dividend payments.
How do I declare Baltic instruments?
Transactions for Baltic instruments will appear in the following tables:
- 5.1 — Interest on uninvested cash earned in Estonia, taxed Estonian bond interest payments
- 6.1 — Estonian instrument sales
- 7.1 — Dividends earned and taxed in Estonia
- 8.1 — Taxed interest earned outside Estonia, like Latvian and Lithuanian bonds’ interest payments.
- 8.2 — Instrument sales outside Estonia
Tables 5.1, 6.1, 7.1 and 8.2 are pre-filled for you in EMTA’s portal. The content in Tables 5.1, 7.1 and 8.1 also needs to be added to Table 6.5
Make sure to pay attention to the transactions appearing in Tables 6.1 and 8.2. These are automatically pre-filled in EMTA by NasdaqCSD and you might have to delete these transactions from your final declaration. That’s because if the transaction happened within an investment account, it does not need to be declared — but Nasdaq has no way of knowing in which system the transaction was made, and thus automatically fills in the data for everyone. For users who need to take action here, we outline it in their tax report.
How do I declare dividends from foreign instruments?
If you earned dividends from foreign instruments, such as US and EU stocks, this income has already been taxed abroad. These dividends must be reported in Table 8.8 in your tax declaration. You can automatically forward this information from Lightyear to the EMTA portal into Table 8.8. This means that you will not have to manually enter this information in Table 8.8.
However, you will also need to enter the information on foreign dividend income into Table 6.5. However, the report we generate for our users will include this data, along with additional information that needs to be included in Table 6.5.
In 6.5, the dividend payment is reported in two parts: the gross dividend amount is the contribution to your investment account and the tax withheld is a withdrawal from it.
How do I declare US-listed ADRs?
Make sure to pay extra attention to dividends from US-listed ADR companies. While dividends from these companies have already been taxed, we don’t receive the tax withholding rate information, meaning we can’t forward these transactions automatically. If you hold US ADRs that have paid dividends in 2024, you’ll need to confirm the correct tax withholding rate with the issuer and declare these dividends manually.
How do I declare the reward I got for referring a friend / being referred to Lightyear?
If you joined or referred a friend to Lightyear during a promotion campaign where we offered 15€ rewards, then you’ll need to add the reward as a contribution in Table 6.5. In the tax report we generate for you, we’ve added a line with this payment into Table 6.5 for you to easily copy-paste.
Our usual 10€ reward is not taxed, and because of that, doesn’t need to be declared.
How do I declare my stock transfers made in 2024 to Lightyear?
If you transferred your stocks to Lightyear from another investment account, then no need to declare anything! In the investment account regime, deposits, withdrawals and stock transfers between two different investment accounts are not declared at all, because they still remain in the tax efficient “system”.
However, if you have transferred your stocks to Lightyear during 2024 from a regular account, then even if you declare Lightyear as your investment account for 2024, those stocks still need to be declared and taxed in the regular regime, pursuant to Personal Income Tax law.
So for an example:
- if you purchased stocks in the regular regime, meaning you did not use an investment account to acquire them;
- you then transferred those stocks during 2024 to Lightyear investment account and sold them here;
- then the sell transaction (and gain or loss thereof) should be reported in your tax declaration table 8.2 (which applies in the regular regime);
- and the proceeds from the sale transaction you executed in Lightyear, will need to be reported as a contribution to your Lightyear investment account - table 6.5 part II.
If you made transfers into Lightyear from your regular account before 2024, and these stocks were still in your account on 1.01.2024, then these do count as contributions to your Lightyear account. This is because the amended law foresaw a one-off specific exemption to include both cash and instruments held as at 1.01.2024, as the initial deposit.
This means that in your 2024 investment account report, these are included in your initial instrument deposit amount. If you sold them during 2024, then nothing needs to be reported, as the transaction is considered to be made in an investment account.
Can I go through the tax report flow more than once?
After you’ve finished and exited the flow, we send you an email with a csv file of the created report — so to access that you don’t actually need to go through the flow again.
For Tables we can forward data to automatically (8.1 and 8.8), we can only submit that information once. But you can always check the information from EMTA’s portal and update where needed.
If you re-enter the flow after completing it, you’ll automatically be directed to the last screen, where you can see all the tables that need your manual attention in EMTA’s portal. We strongly recommend going through the flow at the time you’re actually ready to fill in your declaration.
Will tax reporting for the 2025 tax year be fully automated?
We’re already working with EMTA to make sure Lightyear will have access to the automated tax information forwarding for investment accounts in 2026, for your 2025 declaration.