Did you call them? Any insights?
This year, because of my large mortgage, I got less than 50% of the US WHT so I’d like to see if I can optimise anything.
one option is instead of taking tax credit, is to take withheld tax as a deduction. this works out better if proportion is heavily restricted.
How does that work? I mean in the tax portal ( etax bl or zh or any other) ?
Do you declare the US ETFs not as DA-1 securities? (It is automatic in the ZH portal afaik, or maybe I just assume as I have been doing that for a few years now)
Where (which section of tax return) do you mention withheld tax as a deduction ?
Very curious as I am heading towards home ownership / mortgage and have all assets in US domiciled ETFs
I think I just manually reduced the dividend amount by the WHT in the tax return.
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As @PhilMongoose says, you can declare the net amount.
That said, for non US investments, might be better to switch to UCITS funds.
@PhilMongoose i learnt something new today
@nabalzbhf my favourite funds don’t have UCITS equivalent yet
I did, and afterwards send them a correction (account statement with notes on it), along the lines of
declared dividend income (as in account statement) = 100
non-refunded WHT (as in DA-1 feedback, they have access to that) = -15
corrected income = 85
They accepted it and taxed me on the 85.
edit: Basically this, but after submitting, once final DA-1 calculation was done:
It is often better, as your ucits dividends directly increase the amount of DA-1 you can get back.
Meaning if you would not get back the full amount, then instead separating it to ucits funds increases the proportion you get back on you DA-1 titles.
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Got my first DA-1 denied in AG this year. Something about my mortgage interest being higher lol. Stupid system.
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Not significantly so, depends on the parameters.
There’d be a lower proportionate deduction to DA-1 refunds, but also a lower total max-refund-amount.
So if I were to switch to UCITS versions of my funds (though at a quick glance I don’t see a fund directly corresponding to VEU, I might have to split it in two), I’d pay a higher TER (looks like 15 bp instead of 7), but get back a bit more WHT from the US funds, and would pay 0% WHT (assuming IE based funds). Am I right?
Not necessarily. DA-1 refunds are calculated as:
Gross DA-1 income
./. Deductions
= Relevant income
x avg. tax rate
= Max deduction
Moving non-US to non-DA1 will lower the considered deductions. BUT it will also significantly reduce DA-1 income. So your US tax losses could be slightly higher or lower, depends on the other parameters.
It’s still a idea worth looking into: With full refund, the reason to have non-US not in US from a tax perspective is WHT on fund level. If those are irrelevant and you get full refund, domicile wouldn’t matter.
If you don’t get full refund, avoid US domicile to not pay US-WHT in the first place. In case of no refund at all, domicile doesn’t matter for US stocks either, tax-wise.
Taxable income = taxable income less wht
Hello all,
Checking my IBKR report for Tax declaration.
For withholding Tax return.
It is clear for VT (US treaty)
But for my TDIV (NL) ETF
It is also reported (quite) similar to VT (similar section)
Withholding tax : Amount corresponding to 15% of my dividends on TDIV.
However checking the CH Tax treaties, I could not find NL in the list:
Is that correct that I cannot ask for reimbursement of withholding tax in this case?
And just declare
Taxable income = taxable income less wht
According to the double taxation agreement overview, you can use DA-1 also for the Netherlands, same as US: Double taxation agreements
Your link is about forms to get withholding tax refunds from a foreign country that deducted more than the treaty rate. It seems you were only deducted the 15% treaty rate, so no refund from the foreign country is possible. But a Swiss tax credit is still possible with DA-1.
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That’s an excellent news! 
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Well, technically yes. You can’t ask for reimbursement (from NL) because you get the whole amount as tax credits via DA-1 from CH.
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Hi, apologies as this is now a bit off topic, but I used the search and didn’t want to open my own topic.
I had around 360 CHF of dividend taxation to be reimbursed. However, as far as I understand, since I also entered 600 CHF for „portfolio management costs“ (based on 0.3% of 200k assets), my dividend return was reduced by tax rate * 600 CHF. I only got some 260 CHF back ultimately.
Do I see that correct? Does it mean it makes no difference for someone with DA-1 reimburseable dividends to enter wealth management costs in the tax declaration? Because whatever you save on normal taxes is exactly equal to what they deduct from your reimbursement of dividends?
The way I see it, if I don’t enter it in the tax declaration I pay more tax, but also get the full dividends back, so the outcome is the same?
Is there any loophole I’m not seeing? Just curious because these 0.3% always get marketed as a quick way to save on taxes but that would make them meaningless for anyone with overseas ETFs?
The Swiss government calculates taxes owed on dividends and deducts what you already paid through withholding tax. You can only get credited what you actually have to pay in taxes.
You pay income tax on dividends. This income tax is reduced by the portfolio management costs, so of course they substract those from the maximum DA-1 credit amount, as you actually pay less income tax for the dividends because of the management costs. If you had other dividends without WHT, they wouldn’t substract the full management costs (e.g. they would only substract 300 management costs if you had, in addition, received the same amount of dividends from Swiss companies).
I don’t know what your full amount of dividends was, I’m just assuming the CHF 360 are a 1.5% yield, so CHF 2400 dividends with 15% WHT. Assuming no interest on any debt, they take 2400, deduct 600 management costs → 1800, and calculate your income tax on that. Let’s say the average income tax rate is 12% (federal + cantonal + local), the income tax one actually pays on those dividends is CHF 216. So the maximum credit on the tax bill will be those 216. You say you got 260, so your average tax rate is more like 14.4%.
If you want to get the full amount credited, you’ll need to have a higher average tax rate.
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Thanks for the extensive answer. So I’m trying to look purely at the effective outcome (ie money in my account) could you let me know if I’m correct?
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if you have Swiss stocks or others outside DA1 the effect is smaller because the wealth management gets spread around
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The lower your income tax is the more you lose from this, as they always withhold 15%, but you’re only getting back income tax rate * dividends?
it’s a bit confusing to me how suddenly paying more taxes / having less deductions is good because it leads to more money back 
What would happen if I don’t put any wealth management costs into the tax declaration? I should get almost the whole dividend withholding tax back but also pay more tax on my actual income?