Investing in CH, but going back an EU country in 5 years

Dear Mustachians,

I was an observer of the forum for about 1 year and it helped me immensely with starting my journey as a retail investor. Really happy to officially join the community!

I am an expat from the EU living in Switzerland for the last 5 years. My plan is to stay for another 5 years in the country and then move back to my home country in the EU.

To keep it short, about 1 year ago I started investing by opening an account on IBKR. My strategy is relatively simple:

VOO (about 40% of the portfolio)
SCHD (about 40% of the portfolio)
A few individual stocks (about 20% of the portfolio).

My question is: should my move back to the EU play a role in which ETFs I’m investing?

Based on my research on this forum and Reddit, it would most likely make sense to close all positions and not transfer them to a new account (I would be subject to tax gains). So, should I invest as I am and then re-adjust once relocated and continue?

I found the topic: Is it worth to invest into US ETFs (VT) if expecting relocation to an EU country in a few years? - Share your story - Mustachian Post Community, which heled me a lot. If there are more topics, please direct me to them. I hope I did not miss any.

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It really depends on the capital gains taxes situation in the country you’re going to and what ETFs are available to you there. I’m pretty sure neither VOO or SCHD are available in the EU unless you sell a put option to get them.
Some countries (eg Greece) have no capital gains taxes on UCITS ETF sales or their dividends, but do tax non-UCITS ETFs (though it’s quite low, I can’t recall but maybe 10-15% at most), some other countries (eg Ireland) take a pound of flesh, others like Sweden have a flat AUM-based tax per year. You could consider selling US ETFs and rebuying them in UCITS form (nothing equivalent to SCHD sadly), then keeping the IBKR account if the tax situation is good, or selling to reset the cost basis if the tax situation is not good.

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I agree with you and you are right, neither of them are available in the EU, and I am not into options at all.

Oh they’re available, you just need your broker to treat as a professional investor to get around retail regulations

Sources:

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