It shouldn’t - I can usually trade within seconds after exchanging.
Although, on the other hand, I always do a CHF.USD sell rather than the opposite buy.
Easier to handle “numerically”, and always gets rid of all the CHF. 
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How do you do it? If read that it would work on the TWS Software for the desktop, if you select FXConv. I only tried the web version so far with IdealPro, and so far it always took 2 days until I could trade with that money. No matter if I bought USD.CHF or sold CHF.USD.
always gets rid of all the CHF.
Also btw you should leave a bit of base currency in there, to pay the minimal monthly fees. Otherwise it randomly sells something.
Usually either through the phone app, or even Account Management interface, but also through WebTrader.
IdealPro vs. FXconv - I don’t remember it made any difference other than the FX pair appearing within the portfolio or not.
Will be doing it again today/next week, so I can report back.
Thanks for the heads up!
I do have my base currency as USD, and there is always a bit left - so I don’t need to worry about random sales.
FX takes 2 days to settle. Trades on US markets take 2 days to settle. You can trade immediately.
IB will automatically convert small remaining amounts to base currency anyway so CHF.USD vs USD.CHF don’t matter. Something like under 5 dollars will get automatically converted.
Just wanted to surface this great post that compares Degiro with the two main IBKR fee systems.
https://thepoorswiss.com/comparison-brokers-interactive-brokers-tiered/
In general I’d suggest If you have more than 100’000 USD (or CHF), you should use Interactive Brokers with the Tiered Pricing system.
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That’s quite an obvious one (because IB has no custody fees after that point).
I would argue though that IB wins in many other cases under 100k assets as well.
Depending on how frequently you plan to be investing - if it’s 2-3 times a year then it’s possibly borderline; for everything more frequent than that, IB probably wins.
Also, if you plan to take this whole (early) FI thing on seriously, the switching/transfer costs once you reach 100k need to be taken into account as well. 
My approach was to start immediately with IB, and the “0 custody fees” level motivates me to reach that 100k target ASAP (latest next year).
P.S. Wait, what? Mr. The Poor Swiss has a “portfolio well below 100K”? I feel betrayed haha 
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Found also a nice comparison of several broker/banks back from 2018. If this was already posted, sorry for that. Starting at p20 (and this is in German). Hope the expenses and other information are still valid.
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Not anymore! I reached 100K threshold on IB now
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Haha fantastic! Congrats!!
Hope to join the club soon. 
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Thanks! Good luck joining the club 
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As is well known, the USA has an inheritance tax, which also applies to us if we hold American securities in a Swiss custody account.
I have now opened an Interactive Brokers account and this means that non-US securities are also held in the USA.
Does this mean that the total amount invested with IB is relevant for US inheritance tax? Or does this only apply to American equities, ETF’s and funds?
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Only american, but you’re probably at IB UK anyway, not at the US one.
As far as I know, the US Estate Tax applies to securities issued in the US. You can see which securities were issued where by the ISIN. If the first two characters of the ISIN are “US”, then it’s been issued in the US.
Broker makes no difference here. You can hold US securities at Swissquote and European securities at IB. The difference are broker fees and the presence or absence of Swiss stamp duty.
Finally, a person domiciled in Switzerland at the time of death, can count on an $11 million exemption, at the time of writing this post, due to the US-CH tax treaty.
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It was discussed here. As long as you’re a tax resident of Switzerland the treaty has a exemption above $60K as Bojack mentioned in the previous relply
Hope it helps
More info here in this thread
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Sorry to resurrect this - but is this even possible?
I mean transferring funds into IB via Transferwise or Revolut, i.e. a non-bank account (which kind of doesn’t have your name next to it).
Reason I’m looking into it - I have some money sitting at home country (with my parents account currently, source are EUR) and I had an idea to load it into my IB and buy VT.
Apparently if they sent it to my banking account in CH, that would be taxed as a gift at 5/6% (+25% Zuschlag).
Has anyone succeeded with such a transfer as above?
Edit: I guess this could also technically be seen as tax evasion - am I right? 
And in general, if I were to transfer any money from my own foreign account to my CH bank account - that would be taxed as income, correct?
(Went quite offtopic there )
Depending on the currency, a Revolut or TransferWise sending account will be in your name as the account holder, even though it might be a non-bank and/or E-money account.
On the other hand, transfers from a third-party account to a brokerage account are not a good idea in my opinion.
No reason to do so - unless you want to try to “obfuscate” the origin / source of these funds?
If you have an account with IBKR UK, you should be able to transfer EUR to IBKR directly - as an inexpensive/free SEPA transfer.
How much? It shouldn’t be much if coming from your parents, should it?
Also, you might want to check whether any and which amounts are exempt.
No.
Transfers between your own accounts are not taxable, whereever they may be located. Of course you did already include these foreign accounts in last year’s tax return, didn’t you?
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I think when you signed up for IBKR you had to confirm somewhere that you will only invest your own money with your account, or something like that. So either you are evading taxes, or you are breaking the terms of your broker…
But the Schenkungssteuer doesn’t generally apply for parents-children. So you should be fine, to just transfer that money to you first.
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It seems to do, depending on canton…
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Few questions:
- Are commission fees on US shares paid in USD or base currency?
- IB (and possibly other brokers) do not allow share transfers in single name accounts into joint IB accounts. Is there a non-complex work around?
- Can you transfer USD from REVOLUT to IB? I was thinking for small amounts this might be cheaper than IB FX cost
Thanks
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