UK investments & SIPP - transfer to Switzerland? Tax implications?

Investing / Others
1

Hi All,

Question for UK nationals now permanently living in Switzerland.

I still have investments in the UK, including:

  • A general investment account (funds + shares)

  • A SIPP holding my former employer pensions

I don’t plan to move back to the UK and expect to stay in Switzerland long term. No other assets/property or income from UK. I’d like to get some advice on:

  1. Is it possible (or sensible) to transfer UK investments to Switzerland?

    • For the taxable investment account: can assets be transferred in kind to a Swiss broker, or would this require liquidation?

    • For the SIPP: is there any route to move this into the Swiss pension system - Pillar 2 or Vested Benefits?

  2. What are the tax implications?

    • Would selling UK investments trigger UK capital gains tax even though I’m non-resident?

    • Are there Swiss tax consequences on transfer or sale?

    • Any issues around reporting (e.g. UK exit tax, ongoing UK tax exposure, etc.)?

Apologies if this has been covered before – I did a quick search but may have missed prior threads.

Grateful for any practical experience or pointers. Thanks in advance.

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2

A lot of us are keeping our investments with a UK broker (IBKR UK). Generally competent brokers should be able to do in kind, and you’ll not have any Swiss taxes on liquidation either, as there’s no capital gains tax here. No idea about the UK side of tax reporting, though AFAIU as long as you’re sure you’re not tax resident anymore it should be possible for non-UK based assets (which UCITS ETFs mostly are) to be sold without triggering UK tax, but take my understanding with a grain of salt.

For taxable investments my advise would be to just keep it with your broker if they’re happy to keep you and transfer it to a new one if they don’t. Swiss brokers actually have a cost disadvantage due to Switzerland levying some transaction taxes on Swiss brokers, but not foreign brokers, and since there is no capital gains tax, you don’t have to put any effort into tracking cost bases or other taxation gimmicks, which is otherwise often a benefit of a local broker.

No idea about transferring pension assets though.

3

Just a note to be careful, there were a lot of scammers who were set up to ‘help’ UK people move their SIPP etc. to Switzerland.

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4

Just adding to the previous replies:
As long as you declare UK assets in Switzerland, the Swiss tax authorites don’t care where these assets are located. A transfer to Switzerland therefore does not make any difference to the Swiss authorities.
Similar to @justbob I know nothing about SIPP or the UK tax system. Are the SIPP assets considered 2nd pillar assets by Swiss tax authorities (i.e. you don’t pay taxes on them)? In any case, you might want to ask the pension fund of your employer in Switzerland about such a transfer.

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