Mortgage and capital gain taxes

Taxes
#1

Hello everyone!

I have a question for you. I have a well diversified ETF portfolio and I have always been very careful to respect all conditions in order not to be considered a professional trader and to have to pay Swiss taxes on ETF capital gains.

Now I am considering an investment in real estate to further diversify my income streams. The idea is to buy an apartment with 60% mortgage and rent it.

I know that one of the conditions not to be considered a professional trader is avoiding leverage. Could this mortgage be considered “leverage” if I have in my ETFs more capital than what I took as mortgage as so I could technically have bought the apartment without loans from the bank? Of course without leverage the real estate investment would be much less attractive…

Thank you in advance!

#2

The issue would be borrowing money to invest, afaik that’s not how mortgage are considered (here you borrowed money to buy real estate).

(Plus even if you fall afoul of one of the criteria, it doesn’t make you automatically a professional investor, assuming it’s not your main source of income it seems very unlikely they would classify you that way).