Danish ETF - domicile US or Sweden?

Investing / Portfolios
1

I want to buy a Danish ETF. I see two options:

EDEN - MSCI Denmark ETF: 0.53% TER domiciled in US

XACTC25 - OMXC25 ESG: 0.20% domiciled in Sweden

Does anyone know what is better for Swiss residents in such a constellation in terms of withholding taxes? The TER difference is quite stark, but I could not find much about Swedish ETFs for L2TW, for L1TW it seems Denmark has the same agreement with both countries. For L2TW for US would be adding it to DA-1 form, but for Sweden I have no idea and couldn’t seem to find this on Google.

2

Knock yourself out. Sweden without treaty seems to be 30%. (The orange things are links. There is more information behind the links.)

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3

Thanks, for both cases both L1TW and L2TW are 15% each.

4

If you can make use of the benefits of the treaty (bureaucracy). Easy with IBKR for the USA. Sweden? I don’t know.

5

The explanation to the form knows.
Sweden is of course included too.

6

As you well know, geting treaty rate tax credit in Switzerland with the DA-1 is not the hard part. Having the foreign tax administration pay back withholding tax from non-treaty to treaty rate is.

7

Why not buy the stocks directly?

MSCI Denmark has like 16 constituents and 70% ! of that is Novo Nordisk alone. You could just buy the top 10 stocks and have 90 +% of the index.

With the single stocks you also save on TER and can easily claim with DA-1.

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8

Denmark (and Sweden) both get free withholding tax vouchers at IBKR. But you still have to actually reclaim it in Denmark (or Sweden). For the US most brokers do so automatically (as required by US law).

Your direct investment idea is clearly superior tax-wise, if you claim everything back (15% in Denmark + 15% L2TW vs 15% in Denmark only). But the same can be said about nearly all ETFs that hold stocks outside their domicile (since Switzerland has good treaties).

9

Normally I would never suggest owning individual securities for tax reclaim purposes.
But in this case it’s the superior alternative imo, as there are so few index constituents. It’s relatively easy to manage. Also paying 0.2%+ TER for a fund that’s 70% Novo Nordisk, is pretty sub-optimal to say the least.

10

I wonder what the rational for OP to buy a danish etf, if it’s due to past performance seems like it’s a better bet to buy Novo Nordisk directly indeed :grinning:

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11

Why don‘t sou buy the DBX MSCI Nordics ETF, whixh is a fairly good ETF. And if you want to jump on the Novo Nordisk Train buy the Novo Share on top, lets say 50/50 eqch? That probably gives you the recen return of MSCI Denmark (which may revert tomorrow if Novo stumbles
) but at the same time a fairly good and well diversified exposure to the entire Nordics?

Kind regards,

Christian

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12

The funds mentioned in the original post actually (and unlike the index) do not have 70% Novo Nordisk:

XACT OMXC25 ESG (UCITS ETF): 18.18%
“EDEN” iShares MSCI Denmark ETF: 22.66%, tracking the MSCI Denmark IMI 25/50 index

13

Fair point. :+1: I was tired yesterday and didn’t think about that.

That said, at a 0.33 percentage points higher TER for the US-domiciled iShares fund (with at least roughly similar composition), you may just forgo reclaiming the 15% from Sweden and come out similarly (though I haven’t looked in those two funds and tracking differences further).

Didn’t know it was free. Helpful link, thanks.