We received our tax calculations from the tax office. They denied us the deduction of the 15% of US taxes paid on dividends for the following reason. It does not make much sense to me:
“Le montant maximum de l’imputation forfaitaire d’impôt, ne peut excéder la somme des impôts suisses frappant les rendements en cause après deduction des intérêts passifs y afferents et des frais lies a leur acquisition”
Did something similar happen to someone else on this forum?
What debts do you have ? How much interest do you pay ? I remember an other person here was denied the (full?) deduction because of a mortgage.
Thanks for your answer! No debts and no mortgage.
Are you poor? How much income did you make during the year? If not much, this makes perfect sense. The refund comes from the taxes you’re going to pay to the swiss, so they will not pay you more than you’re gonna pay them.
We are paying 25kCHF in taxes this year… I don’t consider us poor, but we are not near software engineering rates.
So, >15% tax rate? Then I think you should get the refund. Didn’t they leave a contact name and number for questions? Call them. Letters from my Steueramt always contain contact info of responsible person for my case on them.
What was the security in question btw?
Thanks for the suggestion. Yes we will give a call, just that my French is not the greatest :). We hold VT
Also, I’m not familiar with french tax forms, but did you declare the withholding properly? In ZH forms there are two columns, one for securities held at swiss brokers with “zusätzlicher Steuerrückbehalt USA”, one for non-swiss brokers. Make sure you picked the right one. Common source of mistakes. They might be implying you;re trying to claim a refund from the swiss pot of withholding money, into which a non swiss broker will not pay.
Yes I was also wondering about that, but we followed the guide posted on the Mustachianpost website. Looking at our declaration it is seemingly properly declared with all securities listed on a DA-1 form, where it specifically lists the 15% of taxes that were withheld under a column called " Impôt étranger non récupérable".
You added the bank’s paperwork proofing that the withholding was deducted?
Can you let me know for which year? I’ve sent my first declaraton in June last year, another one this year, still nothing from them…
We filed for 2019 in the beginning of April, we received the calculation this week
Yes I read your post. However, we do not have a mortgage…
(Edit: The decision was based on article 52, al. LIA, and on ar. 8 à 12 de l’Ordonnance du Conseil fédéral du 22 août 1967 en la matière. A different article compared with your denied reimbursement)
Thanks, so this means I should expect mine in few months, good! And sorry for off-topic.
Unless your marginal tax rate is < 15%, or you have interests from mortgage, I don’t really see what the issue could be.
Thanks for all the suggestions. I will get in touch with the person who dealt with our tax declaration tomorrow. For this year it involves only 60 CHF or so, but we bought much more stock this year so for next year it will matter. I like to be prepared beforehand and not deal with these issues afterwards.
I guess from Swiss perspective, given high fees they might have assumed “cost of acquisition” with >60 CHF 
Hi,
Same here. Every. Single. Year.
The explanation I got from my tax advisor is that the refunded amount cannot be greater that the amount of taxes paid on securities revenue. Since I have some deductions they only reimburse a partial amount.
Thanks for your explanation. In our case all was denied… Anyway I look at it it does not make sense. I still need to call them and ask though.