Corner Trader to introduce new tax for inactive accounts

Just received the following email from cornertrader (cornerbank):

Dear Client

we would like to inform you that we are introducing a new fee for inactive accounts.

The first booking is planned for October1st 2019 and will impact accounts which have been funded for more than 12 months but haven’t shown any trading activity in the period from July to September.

How does it work?

  • Inactive accounts are accounts older than 12 months, which have shown no trading activity in a given quarter (buy or sell of a financial instrument).
  • The quarters are fixed periods: from January to March, April to June, July to September and October to December.
  • The fee will be charged at 35CHF per quarter (140 CHF per year) and booked directly from your Cornèrtrader account.
  • Accounts which have shown previous activity but stopped trading for one quarter, will not be impacted for the period. However, if the inactivty continues into the next quarter and onwards, the account will be considered as inactive and therefore, it will be subject to the fee.

Nice shitty move. I used CT for a few long term investment that I don’t intend to expand further. I am going to transfer somewhere else.
Anyone knows a broker that allows for “inactive accounts”?

The usual Germans.

If you trade so seldom (or never at all) and can’t bear such fees, you better disregard all Swiss brokers. And many other countries as well.

Mmn… I need to find a broker because selling right now would mean selling at a loss (in addition to the fees for selling of CT)…

…which is irrelevant as long as you’re taxed as an individual in Switzerland?

(except, as you said yourself, trading fees/commissions)

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Do I understand correctly that when I have at least two trades a year, with a timeframe of 6 months in-between, I’ll never be charged the inactivity fee? I have initially planned to increase my Investment once a year, but two times a year might be an option.

Please check this post and the following, for more info.

I have also requested the security transfer form and will leave Corner Trader and close my account.

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Thanks for referring the other post. Where are you moving to?

I have an account at IBKR, will move it there and convert into VXUS.

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Holly cow, I need to close my croner account. I actually didn’t get any info about this.

So, the procedure to switch would be this:

  1. Open account to new place
  2. Inform new place you’re going to transfer money from CT
  3. Request security transfer form from CT, fill it, close accouot

Done.

Am I missing something?

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I think I will just sell at CT, pay out, close account, send CHF to IB, convert to USD, buy US ETF.

My investments are down a bit much, that’s why I don’t want to sell at CT :see_no_evil:

It makes no difference if they’re down. You are supposed to sell and then buy the same stuff a few days later. What logic do you use that makes it seem like you lose anything?

Is that actually true? If the volatility is pretty high like now, missing a few up or down days could have a fairly large impact.

From what I understood from the other thread referring to the security transfer I thought if you do it that way you aren’t selling?

Fortunately I have peanuts at CT so I don’t have to even bother with the transferring postitions. I’ll just sell at CT and pay out. I wonder if I can transfer USDs to Revolut from there.

Yeah, you may lose or win a couple of percent, it’s a lottery. But the expected value of such an operation (sell and then buy a couple of days later) is very close to 0.

Yes, if you do transfer then it’s like putting a $100 bill from one wallet to another. But I want to convert it into a US ETF. And selling at IB would anyway cost me 0.1%, compared to 0.12% at CT. Not much difference.

So you actually bought USD denominated ETFs at CT? I guess CT’s currency conversion is a robbery, not?

Yes, that why I made only one transfer. I learnt about the fee after I made the conversion. Afterwards I opened IB account.

On the other hand, I started thinking whether it makes sense to make a small trade in VWRL in CHF at CT every quarter for broker accounts diversification…

Mind you, you need min. 75’000 CHF to have the CAPITAL pricing scheme. Then you pay 18 CHF or 0.12% for each transaction, whichever is higher. That means, to really only effectively pay 0.12%, you would need to make a purchase of 15’000 CHF every quarter.

Here a comparison of costs for this scenario (4x15k) from Moneyland:

image

Gotta say, since I would also save 60 CHF money account fee at PF, it would make it almost on par with CT. Btw, at PF you pay 50 CHF for a trade of 15’000 CHF. Absolutely barbaric! Yet still, one of the cheapest brokers in Switzerland! :astonished:

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