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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I know you said you had no other debts but sharing for others: if you have significant other debts you are claiming interest tax relief on then your DA-1 may be rejected.
Was the case for me when I was claiming ~CHF3k in interest on student loans off my taxes and also trying to claim ~CHF500 in DA-1 refunds.
I’m still not sure if this is really a valid reason. Is there any law for this?
Refund for US WHT is based on a double taxation agreement. You’re entitled only to the amount that avoids double taxation. This means that your refund is capped not only by the US WHT amount but also by the amount of Swiss taxes. And for this purpose, only the part of Swiss income taxes related to income from these US ETFs is considered.
The tax rate used for this calculation is the effective/average tax rate, not the marginal tax rate. The gross dividends are reduced by deductions related to assets (e.g. management costs) and liabilities (e.g. deductible interest). This reduction is applied proportionally (percentage of US ETFs of total assets). This makes sense as these deductions reduce your Swiss income taxes and thus, they don’t qualify for double taxation relief.
reduction = related tax deductions x tax value of US ETFs : tax value of all assets
maximum refund = (gross dividends - reduction) x tax rate
If the maximum refund is greater than or equal to 15% of gross dividends, you get a refund for the whole US WHT. If it’s lower, you only get that part. If it’s below CHF 100 you don’t get anything.
Note that Switzerland doesn’t get this money back from the US. Switzerland waives these taxes as required by the DTA. That makes it clear why it would never make sense to refund more than what’s taxed in Switzerland.
Details (in German):
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