Blatt R-D 1 E or in clear tax refound of the German withholding tax

Hello,

I am trying to fill the formular to claim the 11.325% that you can recover on the german withholding tax.
There is some information on the site of the swiss government about it.
Does anyone have experience about this process.
It is not clear yet for me where I should send the document once filles, Direct to Bonn or to my cantonal tax office for control and then they will send it to Bonn.
If nobody is able to reply I will update later with my experience but it could take time.

I assume it is only possible if you hold German securities or funds directly and not for US or IE funds that hold German securieties.

Even if it is possible, isit even worth it? Germany is a few percent of VT, you’d reduce the total cost at most by maybe 0.01%.

I am definitely a passive investor but once upon a time I made a speculative buy on a large car manufacturer that was in trouble due to lack of respect toward the EPA regulations. The speculative buy outperformed the DAX and the position is closed now

It is worth it because you learn something doing it. In my specific case I can recover a number with three digit this way.
More broadly, withholding tax made difficult to recover is a real burden for any investor.
Off topic but interesting!
I still have dificulty to understand why people invest in VT. You get double penalty with this ETF: US Withholding tax that you have to claim back and local withholding tax from the non US shares that you are unable to recover.

Which fund domicile has better double taxation agreement with 3rd party countries? What is the overall difference?

If you pick just one global market weighted fund, US domicile makes sense since it’s more than half the market.

IIUC a fund that markets only to Swiss people would let you make use of all the Swiss double taxation agreement, assuming they report the data correctly. But then I don’t know of any such fund available to retail investors, and I’d probably only bother asking for refund for top 3-4 countries.