Good day,
so I have a couple positions of which I have 100s of stocks. Some I got inherited, others I purchased myself. About one year ago I read somewhere on the internet about the covered calls and I have, over the last year, started selling covered calls on the positions I have.
I usually sell the calls and close them when I reach about 30% profit. I know about “Kreisschreiben 36” for the taxes and being assigned the “professional trader” status, but to make sure, I talked to my tax advisor and the tax office. They both said the same thing: cause I am still employed as normal employee and under no circumstances could live from my options trades, this is irrelevant. Also, I cite from the tax office “unless you are making 100s of thousands per year, we will not even look at this closer.”
So I think the options are “safe” in that sense that I will not even be considered a professional. (which I am not. I am doing this as hobby, to increase a bit my cash, and because it is interesting. I am actually an electronics engineer and never plan to live from trading.)
Now that I have given the disclaimer 
I want to ask something. So are here some people who also use these call options, and how do you do it? I am not sure if I am doing it “the right way” because I try to be super careful and conservative. For instance I usually look at the 0.2 Delta, 20 to 40 days to expire. Of course this does not give a huge premium, but as soon as I close one trade, I open the next. With this approach I can make around 100 Fr per week, sometimes a bit less, and I still keep all my shares. If I get close to assignment, which happens rarely, I close the trades earlier.
The premium I get I collect and then reinvest in the stocks, such that I have more stocks, this will not only give more dividends, but also opens the opportunity of selling more calls.
Also, the options premium are taxed like capital gains, and not like dividends. So it should be not too much of a problem.
I wonder now. I have read about these option strategies, like buying a call option, and then selling one with a higher premium. The call option bough is used for protection in case one gets assigned. For instance, for VOO one would need more than 50k USD cash to sell one put or call, but with this strategy, you need less.
I use Swissquote broker. I know it is a bit more expensive, but I previously was at the Kantonalbank, which is really the top of the most expensive ones, so I am currently quite happy with it. I wonder if someone else is using these option strategies with Swissquote. You cannot directly trade them like with IB, but they say the system accepts option strategies but you have to place all orders manually, which should not be too much of a problem I think.
Anyone has experience with this on SQ? does it work? how “dangerous” is it? I have not tens of thousands of cash available, as I don’t touch my emergency savings, and all else I do invest, but it would be very attractive to squeeze even a bit more out of these options than I currently am, this would offer whole new possibilities.
What do you guys here think?