Alternative to IB / more user-friendly

Investing / Brokers
143

Also something I was asking myself as I started using it in Q4 2019.

What statements do I need to download?

144

IB offers all sorts of reports… The one that looks most usable for our taxes is the Activity Statement | Yearly. It’s available after the 31st of January, and it took 10 minutes to generate for me.

Also there seem to be other special tax forms available in March/April, but I think those are for US specific things.

2 Likes
145

Not for Swiss tax purposes.

I use a (I believe customised) activity statement containing:

  • Account Information
  • Net Asset Value
  • Open Positions
  • Withholding Tax
  • Dividends
  • Financial Instrument Information
  • (It does in fact omit trades, but will list income I’m not holding at the end of the year).

Keep in mind that - depending on the instruments you’re holding - IBKR’s statements might not provide all required information for Swiss tax purposes. For instance, Switzerland taxes accumulated dividends in funds - yet I don’t think there is any way IBKR would provide these figures for you.

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146

Btw, slightly offtopic question, but might be a good place to ask anyway. By end of February I’ll have the following:

17k in IBKR invested 50/50 in VTI/VIOV
13k in VIAC invested in CH/Europe/Pacific/Canada/EM

So that means that US will be at ~57%. So I’ll get close to market cap weights of VT. Now, I was wondering, do I need to rebalance anything at all in the future? Or will the market do it for me?

If US keeps outperforming and thus increase it’s global market cap weight to lets say 65%. I won’t have to rebalance because my VTI/VIOV holdings will make up 65% of my total assets by then due to the performance?

147

Do you want to replicate VT ? If so, you have nothing to rebalance because you “own VT”. If it is not your goal, then your question doen’t have an answer.

148

Yes I want to get as close as possible to VT. In numbers:

Switzerland = 37%x13/30 = 16%
Europe = 18%x13/30 = 8%
Pacific = 15%x13/30 = 7%
Canada = 7%x13/30 = 3%
EM = 20%x13/30 = 9%
USA = 17/30 = 57%

So no need to rebalance whatever happens in the market? It’s like “owning a modified VT” as a whole?

149

Oh, I didn’t realise you had so much Switzerland… Now with the details it looks different, I thought you only increased US small cap % in the US part. As it is significantly different from VT, can you tell me what characteristics from VT you want to keep ? Obviously you can’t have VT and not VT like Schrödinger’s cat.

For example, if the US % is your main concern, then Switzerland performance is the main factor and if it differs from “a lot of Europe + a bit of other stuff” (you probably see what I mean) then rebalancing would be necessary.

150

There is the annual statement that includes every transaction with a timestamp, gross dividends and withholding taxes that were applied to the dividends and your open position at 31.12 all in your base currency. It has been available for a few days now.

1 Like
151

I’ll just attach the Annual Activity Statement. There should be enough information for the tax office.

152

You can always send an email to ictax asking if they could add the security to the catalogue.
Or read the annual report of the fund management if you have nothing better to do :slightly_smiling_face:

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153

I have - to the point where I had to calculate them myself (I got rid of the funds in question later), as the figures just weren’t available.

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154

Hi Tino,

Since direct wire from Revolut doesn’t seem to work anymore, I’ve found a fourth method if you’re using an iPhone or iPad:

  • Add your Revolut credit card to Apple Pay
  • Send CHF to your Revolut account. Exchange for USD
  • Look for TDAmeritrade in the Apple Business Chat
  • Type “Apple Pay” then they will ask you to Log in to your account
  • Type the amount you want to transfer
  • That’s it.

Have just ran a test with 10$ and it got transferred instantly into my trading account.

Not sure about the daily limit though. Need to check it out.

3 Likes
155

WOW! I love this board :wink:

I have Apple Pay and Revolut’s card inside but I don’t see/understand the “Apple Business Chat” … Is in the iphone’s wallet? I must search in the apps for the wallet?

Thank you.

Tino.

156

Will have a hard time to explain this by text but you’ll get an idea if you watch the below YT video. The guy does not cover the transfer from A to Z but he covers the Apple Business Chat part around minute 2:45.
And it appears that you could do way more than just fundings to your account. You might even actually trade with this system. Lots of potential.
Quiet surprised TD come up with this solution because until now I had the feeling to deal with a Bank that still lives in the 80’s for things like account opening, transfers, etc. (Their platform is great though)

And FYI, you dont even need to install the TDAmeritrade app to make it work.

2 Likes
157

Thank you. I’ll try next time I have to send money to TD from Revolut.

Completely agree. Same impression here. Playing a bit with the web interface and going to some places in my account without passing by the “standard” paths I saw, for example, that the US accounts can do much more online than us from Switzerland.

Sending positions to TD from IB is just some hours and all online. Doing the other sens… a form signed and sent by mail!!! :face_with_raised_eyebrow: I didn’t try but I hope they’ll accept a scan in the client interface.

I request for ACH transfers outside to TW or IB and they told me that was impossible because IB or TW were not “standard” banks, so I requested also opening a bank account in the TIAA Bank that I know that they accept non-US people.

Normally you can do all the process online but after one month waiting with all the documents sent they declined because I had a EU passport :rage:… Not even accept that we are not in UE, the point was my passport.

Well, for the Thinkorswim software so high level and for other things so old …

Regards.

158

Wow thats by far the easiest way to top up your TD Ameritrade account.

Thats how it worked for me:

  1. Searching in the homescreen spotlight didn’t work for me. Instead open Apple Maps (not Google) on a ios device, type TD Ameritrade, choose one branch, scroll down and choose “send message”.

  2. Then as discribed by Cursino, type “Apple Pay”, log in to your Ameritrade account, make sure you have Revolut as your primary card in Apple Wallet and type an amount, for instance “1000”.

159

Hi,
Just spoke to TD Ameritrade customer rep and I was told that they are going to stop the Apple Pay option by mid March because a lot of people are not using it… Very sad.

160

Hey Tino, thanks for your efforts here on linking up TDA. I currently don’t have an IB or Revolut account, however, I do have a TW & TDA account and looking to get the connection going.

Can you confirm how you get funds from your UBS account to your TDA account via TW? Is this method still working for you?

161

Hi @mikexavier I can confirm that the 04/11/2019 I did a ACH of 10$ from my TW account to TD successfully… Of course, from UBS to TW there is no problem at all.
TW charged 1.40 USD and the data for TW was:

  • Name, etc…
  • Routing : 021912915
  • Account : XXXXXXXXX (Your TD account number)

The money arrived in one or two business days… don’t remember. Was quick but not as quick as UBS → IB, e.g.

The only thing that didn’t work was TD → TW . TW told me that we cannot use the USD account like a “standard” US account. They don’t allow to have the micro-payments to link the accounts.

Regards.

162

Damn… Such a sad news indeed. Will drop them a line to get some more details.