I don’t follow. Here - Chapter 4 — Part 2: Withholding taxes on dividends received, concrete examples
it says that L1TW is 0% for US ETFs with US stocks and L2TW is 15% that is recoverable via W8-BEN and DA-1. There is no mention of an “additional 15% withholding in Switzerland, refundable from the Swiss tax authority”.
There is - but the information provided in that link (at least for „Scenario 4: a Swiss buys the VT ETF (Vanguard Total World Stock ETF) domiciled in the US“ and particularly with regard to the DA-1 and R-US 164 forms) is inaccurate anyway.
Keep in mind that I was replying to @Cortana, who is using a Swiss broker/bank. He receives 70% of U.S. dividends paid out, as also confirmed by @Guillaume_GVA, who is using a Swiss broker too, AFAIK.
See this thread and particularly @tibbe’s post there.
W8-BEN through a qualified intermediary will reduce U.S. withholding tax on U.S. dividends from 30% to 15%. For the remaining non-refundable 15% of U.S. WHT, you can usually (but not always) receive a corresponding tax credit on your Swiss income tax through by filing DA-1.
Irrespective of that, Swiss intermediaries (banks/brokers) have to withhold an additional (Swiss withholding tax) 15% on U.S. dividends, which, I think, you could call L3TW - which is refundable through filing R-US 164.
Ok, thank you for the explanation.
did you manage to solve the situation in the end? I had your exact same problem. I am italian living in Switzerland with B permit.
Just replying to this to confirm and maybe help others.
I did indeed open an IBKR account in January 2024 and by now have received the first dividends (on a US share, on a US ETF will come next week).
I can see that I clearly received 85% of the gross amount, so yes, for IBKR one does not pay 30% but only 15% withholding tax (when receiving dividends on a US share).
I will update in one year’s time how it goes with claiming this 15% back via DA-1, if I don’t forget.
Though I realised IBKR also pays broker interest (while Saxo my cash keeps decreasing for their fees, even after they lowered them, and given they are Swiss broker which has all these drawbacks, I can’t recommend IBKR over them enough, the stamp duty alone for someone who trades a lot is massive in the long run) so I’ll have to figure out how to declare these, even though the amounts are tiny, I feel like taxes should also apply the principle of proportionality.
Well they didn’t for me, and the fact IBKR made it easy (I believe it comes from the lending of shares) and Saxo don’t (of course they did pay when I had a lot of cash with them) is just another plus, and contributes to the feeling - Saxo my cash just goes down, IBKR it goes up. Of course amounts are insignificant, but it’s about the optics.
I think it’s clear IBKR rocks when the question is “who Is best broker for Swiss investor to buy stocks/etfs” . There wouldn’t be any criteria where IBKR won’t win. Except they are not Swiss.
The discussion about Saxo, SQ, Corner etc is mainly focussed on who is best Swiss broker. The choice is complicated