Hello Everyone,
Firstly, I would like to say this forum has been invaluable in terms of knowledge I have gained over the past number of weeks.
My quick story; I’m 30 yrs old from Ireland and I have just moved (hopefully long-term) to Zurich. I have been thinking about investing my savings but because of COVID and other personal circumstances it got postponed until now as I turned 30 and it made me thing about the future even more (from financial point of view).
I have been paying taxes in Ireland for 5 years now since I graduated and January is my last month in my current job in Ireland and I start new one in Zurich in a few days. I already opened DeGiro account and I had to provide residence for tax purposes (Ireland).
So I have approx. €40k saved, of which €20k I would be happy to put into a long term investment. My initial plan was to put it all into ‘Vanguard FTSE All-World UCITS ETF USD Acc’ (Irish Domiciled) and contribute around 1-2k a month to start with.
Now the more I read about investments the more I’m convinced that Ireland is a great place to invest your money, unless you live in Ireland… Any dividends and capital gains from an Irish / EU / EEA domiciled ETF are subject to 41% tax, which is an absolute joke. For that reason, since I moved to Switzerland already, it would make perfect sense if I paid taxes on any investments in Switzerland and not in Ireland.
My questions are: if I started investing now (after I changed my residency to Switzerland in DeGiro) would my capital gains / dividends be subject to tax in Ireland or Switzerland? Or perhaps I should wait with investing until next year (which I would rather avoid, I’m very eager to do it ASAP)?
I also read that having permit B can cause some taxation complications since all taxes are being ‘sorted’ automatically, which confuses me even more! I haven’t gone to the Kreisburo to register yet, but it would make sense to wait with any investments until I receive my permit. Or does a couple of weeks make any difference anyway?
My savings are in EUR but I will be earning CHF from now on. However, it is hard to predict where I will be in 5, 10 or 20 years time. So I think sticking with an ETF in EUR currency probably makes more sense. Or maybe I should choose CHF instead?
And any other thoughts are very welcome!
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,