Yes.
There are basically two situations: you’re either too poor or to rich to do this.
And for the rare person in between: stop playing when you won the game.
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It is not on topic, but I do the same. Margin loans are at the top on market highs and the margin loans are down in bear markets. Just do the opposite and you are fine. Of course you need a strict plan, I use mechanical investment strategies with strict formulas for money management that includes margin loans.
In my dividend portfolio I only use margin loans when I take out money or in a bear market (needing spending money is a bad reason to sell), up to 150% meaning a credit of 50% in addition to the value. In my momentum strategy I always use margin loans depending on the actual state of the market. At market high the loan is limited to 150%, after a loss of 50% it goes up to 300%.
Don’t do that at home!
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You’re right, and to add some colour: 30% drops don’t happen overnight, the largest single drop was in 1987 as you’ll know and it was 27%, when people are describing a market crash it’s in peoples’ minds that it happened overnight, while in reality it could take 1-3 years (!!!) to play out, all with “X of the best days of the market”, dead cat bounces, fakeout shakeouts, grinding sideways…it’s a shitshow! I spent some time going through the graphs from 2000 and 2008 to try to put myself in the shoes of someone going through it, I think it’d be super stressful at best, utter soul destruction if a loan is added on to that too.
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I was fully invested until September 1987, Orange trees and the weather in Spain saved my ass, but this is off topic.
But I was fully invested 2000, 2008 and a few more bear markets. I think I count 8 bear markets where I was fully invested in 7 of it and in the last 4 I did add on margin. 3 times I was very lucky with the timing, one time I was too early and had to suffer a bit… just to make more money after.
I always wonder what all the newbies will do when a real crash happens; Trump does not even let a bear market develop… 
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I mean, if you have and maintain good liquidity, don’t lose your job and can continue investing as it goes down you can make very good returns even without margin.
Remember that dividends are not so irrelevant, and diversification is important, is my guess.
You won’t get an answer until they decide it’s the case. Remember a while ago there was one person on this forum that tried to achieve the professional trader status (to offset the losses), but so far didnt manage to get this status.
How would they be able to realize that? They don’t know at what time you take out a margin loan and they also don’t care what you do with your loan.
No, you don’t need to declare what you do with the money from a margin loan. The bank/broker providing the margin loan doesn’t care what you use it for, as long as you pay the interest and have enough collateral, they won’t bother you.
A general remark, breaking one of the rules doesn’t automatically make you a professional trader. Most of the time it is also in the tax office’s interest to not classify you as a professional, as you’ll then be able to write off your trading losses.
People here on the forum do option trading (not for hedging), take margin loans, hold securities less than 6 months and none of them has been classified professional.
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I have filed at the beginning of March 2025 and so far have only received the provisional bill without any comments.
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What is the provisional bill?
We might need a sort of Wiki.
Enjoyed reading this thread, after having had my own paranoia to be classified as professional trader throughout the years.
When in doubt it can also be helpful to request a ruling from the tax authority where you describe exactly the capital gains you plan to realize and then ask for a guarantee that they are tax free.
I actually did this last year, where I had some outsized BTC capital gains in relation to my wage. I sent an email to the Bern tax authority, asking for a ruling and within one week they replied confirming this ruling on the capital gains being tax free.
Still waiting for the actual tax report to be processed this year, but quite optimistic 
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I am based in Bern and got classified by the tax office of Bern as a commercial investor and the tax and AHV can go up to 55% in Bern:
- I work 100% as an engineer
- I have almost 150trades per year
- I did not keep every stock/ETFfor more than 6months
- I have had leverage money
- the total volume of trade was maybe about 3-4 times of the capital
I wrote this just as a warning for others, as I got asked to do..
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Congrats for being the only person on the forum who has achieved this!
I guess you made substantial profits for the year in question. I’d get a lawyer and contest this. Unless there are some very specific factors, I do not see how someone can reasonably be classed as a professional trader when they are just trading in their spare time. I guess if you are maybe heavily trading in a systematic way or using sophisticated instruments.
FWIW. I have about 300 trades just year to date, have leverage, don’t keep stock for more than 6 months. Not sure what my volume is.
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hahaha 
thanks.. it wasn’t about profit.. I proactively asked them for the tax of 2024 and wanted to get a ruling response from them and that’s what I learned. I will not fight back the rules are kinda clear and they say each case is different and the tax office in switzerland is allowed to open a case also after 10yrs.
Last year I got detailed questions by a letter with a title of tax evasion about an invoice of maybe 5k which they thought I double deducted on my private and my own company in 2020 (after 5yrs!). After some explanation they understood that we did everything correctly and they closed the case.
So in your case in my opinion you never know they can dip dive into it still after 10yrs and tax you. I hope it doesn’t happen of course..
Did you ask for a formal ruling? Did you get it written? If not, ask for written confirmation with the reasoning.
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Only the safe harbor rules are clear. There’s a lot more nuance beyond them.
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Many people don’t realise that they are quoting safe-harbour rules and instead believe they are rules for determining if you are a professional trader.
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yes I asked for the written ruling and I got it in written also, they pointed out that my broker reports shows several indicators of being a commercial investor. They also referred to the below content:
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That’s the difference. Canton by Canton. E.g. Zurich doesn’t have such narrower definitions of professional trader status. If I remember correctly, Zug does.
Thanks for sharing.
Out of curiosity, was the total of paid margin loan interest higher than the total dividend/interest income?