Joint investing account or 2 separate accounts - Interactive Brokers

Investing / Brokers
1

Hello!
My girlfriend and I would like to open up a joint investing account at Interactive Brokers. We are evaluating what would be more beneficial from tax efficiency point of view, open 1 single join account or 2 separate accounts for each of us . I wanted to ask you the following doubts :

  • So when it comes time to file your taxes in Switzerland , does both owners pay half the tax for earnings (dividend) from that account?
  • Is it the Wealth tax also divided in half when it comes time to file your taxes if we both contribute the same? ( our UBS bank account is a joint account)
  • How about the Withholding tax , can you divided in half the remaining 15% being credited for your income tax when filing DA-1 with Swiss Tax authorities ?
  • Do you know if having 2 linked accounts the sum of the balance of the 2 accounts is higher than $100,000 then you don’t need to pay the $10 a month inactivity fees ?

Thanks for the help!

1 Like
2

There’s no difference from tax perspective, except maybe a few minor things - like 50 Fr minimum per person to file DA-1, and the tax program probably won’t like fractional shares, so you’d probably have to do some manual computations here and there

Assuming you’re not married each of you has to declare his/her share of the account as wealth and corresponding prorated share of income as income and pay personal taxes at own rates separately.

And if you’re married you file jointly either way

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3

Thanks, very helpful! We will go for the joint account then :slight_smile:

4

Also in case of a breakup, this could get really messy.

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5

Hi,

Do you have a first-person experience on this matter? We’re married and we would like to open a joint account but I would like to have some insights about worst case scenarios

6

Your wife and her boyfriend suddenly empty your joint account and leave to a foreign country. Your investments and funds are gone.

4 Likes
7

You decide against a joint account for the worst case reason posted by @San_Francisco above and decide to have two single accounts. You go missing while hiking and you are never found, your heirs are blocked from their inheritance for minimum 5 to 20 years. It’s inconvenient at best, and messy, costly and very frustrating at worst.

8

Could a will and designing a executor help with this situation ?
You could share password information with your heirs until everything is OK. Updating the password when the relationship start to fade will be a 5 minutes task compare to closing a joint account.

9

That’s Perfect. Just imagine the return when nobody tinkers with the portfolio or cash out in the middle of recession…