Good day,
I am unfortunately a bit late to the party, I started investing in stocks & ETFs only at 34 
I inherited some stocks and when the dividends came in, I found it a good idea to invest a bit more. So here I am. I first was at the Kantonalbank, but the transaction fees were horrible. I then went to Swissquote. I know it is still more expensive than IBKR, but if I understand correctly, the tax stuff could be a bit more “interesting” with IBKR. Swissquote provides a e-Steuerauszug which contains everything - I hope!
So here comes my question.
I have several US ETFs like VOO, VT, but also JEPQ. Further I also have a couple US stocks, for instance VISA or Realty Income. These pay also a dividend. Of course there is the withholding tax. I have the Steuerauszug from Swissquote, that I can automatically import into the Aargau tax software (EasyTAX) and all my holdings, dividends etc are automatically detected. Good so far. But, I read here in this forum many times, that one needs to fill the DA-1 form. Well. Do I also need to do this even when EasyTAX has successfully imported all my data from the Steuerauszug? also I read about the W8-BEN form. Do I also need to do this or can I completely skip all these steps cause the tax software recognises the data from the Steuerauszug and can import successfully? I am a bit confused.
You’re not, I started at 40 and most people never ever start. And regardless, this is your personal party and time doesn’t go back anyway 
How much dividend did you get (are you above the threshold where it matters?)
Sure. I wish however I had the knowledge of today already when I was 20 and started investing then. It could have been so much more profitable! for example when we look at AMAZON stock. 14 years ago was at 6 dollars. So one could have bought a shit ton of shares, each one of which is now worth over 200 dollars. I struggle a bit to believe that such an enormous growth will still be possible from now on, but we’ll see. Anyways, thanks a lot for the encouragement, I hope I will be successful!
yes I think I am over the threshold. I have to say, the stocks that I inherited are swiss stocks and from them alone I get ~800 CHF dividend.
On the other hand, I wanted to improve a bit my cash flow, for this reason I bought some interesting US stocks, the total dividends are about 60 CHF monthly. So I think I am above the threshold (which is 100 CHF, right?).
You never know. If market falls down by 50% in three months and you have all the time to invest and profit from it
The question is if market falls 50% , would you or we have a stomach to put more money into it.
of course! I read a lot from Warren Buffet. He says, be greedy when others are fearful. I try to do this! but I often run into the problem that I do not have enough cash available, as I have already invested almost as much as makes sense without sacrificing my emergency fund.
So. But the question still remains. Do I need to do something, or is the EasyTAX declaration already everything that I need, because the E-Steuerauszug contains already all needed info?
I think it’s hard not to if you’re disciplined!
And multibaggers…there are stories, some people here got some, there’ll be more in the future. It’s largely down to luck. An American gentleman I am talking to on another forum (not about investment) got nVidia shares when they were worth pennies because their grandson told them “they make the best graphics cards”, an uncle of mine has held MSFT stock since the early 90s, it’s a lot of luck
Here’s a realistic way to think about it: having cash on the side (“dry powder”) feels good, but it may not be very effective in the real world. How much cash will you hold? 10%? Say it’s 10%, that’s 10k in 100k, 20k in 200k at most? That’s reasonable in my opinion, however if you think realistically about buying the dip with a plan (mine is 30% of the dry powder every 10% drop, for example), it means that for 10k you buy 3k of the dip, so if it gets back to ATH you made 300CHF. Not bad but nothing to write home about. It gets worse and worse the bigger your cash holding is, so in the end it’s a feelgood thing - I do it too! - but not really meaningful.
In the real world having rebalance targets across lower correlation assets works better, so you sell high(er) to buy low(er).
I can’t be sure about EasyTax but at least ZHprivateTax seems to automatically handle DA-1 and R-US from eSteuerauszug as expected.
Doesn’t EasyTax provide an indication that DA-1/R-US has been entered?
If you check the summary page of the eSteuerauszug, you should see 15% of the US dividends below each of the captions “Anrechnung ausländischer Quellensteuer” and “Steuerrückbehalt USA”, assuming you don’t hold any other positions with foreign withholding taxes. If that’s the case, everything is fine with W-8 BEN. If “Steuerrückbehlat USA” is 0, Swissquote doesn’t have a W-8 BEN on file for your account, and you would have to fix that.
it does, but I was unsure if this is sufficient. Taxes is something that looks to me like super secret black magic voodoo, so I have absolutely no clue. But if you say that your tax software can handle this, I probably can expect that EasyTAX also does it, because it also shows these two fields.
yep, confirmed, is not 0 for me. On both e-Steuerauszug, from Kantonalbank as well as from Swissquote! so I assume then it is all good! 