According to Saxo, this depends on nationality. They explicitly state that Swiss resident clients with Swiss nationality are automatically eligible and do not need to submit a W-8BEN form. However, Swiss resident clients who are not Swiss nationals must submit the form.
No idea why they make that distinction, but I assume they have their reasons (or at least I hope they do 
).
Why not download it âfirst-partyâ from the IRS?
Because their homepage says that you have to submit a request through support. And I just wanted to be compliant and do everything the right way. 
At least I found out that they only accept signatures on the form in black or blue ink, which unfortunately means I canât use my beautiful fountain pen that writes in green.
Can I ask you a question? How much do you pay with the Platinum for an order at SIX? It should be cheaper as Classic or?
With the Platinum tier, the commission for stocks and ETFs is 0.05%, compared with 0.08% under the Classic tier (always minimum fee of CHF 3 per trade).
How do you manage to get into these tiers? The amount of transactions needed is so high that it seems impossible to do for a buy and hold investor.
I think itâs easier when you open a new account rather than when you grow the account.
For example if you move 250K worth stuff directly to Saxo when you open an account, I believe you get platinum status
Itâs much difficult to upgrade using point system because it needs lot of transaction as you said
It makes sense! How easy is it then to keep the status?
You get 0.025 points per month per 1 CHF (I think) worth of stocks, ETFs etc. held in your account, and you need to have at least 120k points to stay at Platinum level. So if you have 400k in ETFs, you stay at Platinum level even with 0 trades.
Only the last 4 months qualify, not 12 months. So you actually need 1.2M for Platinum without trades.
Is it true that they can downgrade the status?
I somehow thought only upgrade is based on points but the original status should stay as it is.
But anyways with limited trades those 0.03% wouldnât add up to a lot
They will downgrade your status after a 12 month grace period. For a buy and hold investor after 16 months (4 month window + 12 month grace period) you need 1.2M for platinum as mentioned by Jay and ~6.7M for vip.
Thanks for the correction. But as @Abs_max said, if youâre mainly using it as a hold-only broker, slighty higher transaction costs wouldnât matter anyway.
Account status matters a lot for margin interests. To match IBKR rates you need VIP status on Saxo:
But wow, this was quite sneaky and hard to understand. I had not realised that to maintain VIP status after 12 months you need a lot more than 1m CHF. As a big margin user, thatâs kind of a dealbreaker..
Up to a 90k margin loan, platinum seems sufficient to match IBKR (1.5% on CHF), but yes, larger margin loans are more expensive at Saxo unless you have VIP status.
Iâve been quite happy with Saxo so far⊠but I would be deeply grateful if they could perhaps stop pestering me with questions about my payslips, tax returns, other brokerage accounts, the origin of my funds, and investments held in the previous broker, including complete annual portfolio statements.
I also find questions like âIn which year did you start trading?â mildly entertaining. Given that this was quite some time ago, Iâm already looking forward to digging up tax returns and portfolio statements from decades ago. 
Neither the Swiss or other tax authorities nor any other bank has ever come remotely close to asking me for this level of detail. So either theyâre getting nervous rather quickly, or they are taking regulation very very seriously. 
Just saying IBKR never asked me about any of that.
With, maybe, good reason.
The got fined âfor shortcomings in its anti-money-laundering (AML) controlsâ recently.
If I remember correctly, the got fined by the Danish authorities? Was that a general fine or specific to their Danish customers? Itâs hard for me to imagine that the Danish authorities would have any interested in how Saxo does compliance for their Swiss customers.
Actually IBKR asks a yearly update of:
Wealth (liquid and illiquid)
Income
Origin of funds
All self declaration without any supporting documents though.