What to do with Viac 3a when leaving Switzerland for France?

Oh, thx for the clarification.

This is second-hand info, but I heard VIAC are refusing to pay out 3a money when you are moving abroad until after you’ve established your residency in a new country.

So you’re in for a nasty surprise in this case with VIAC. For example I know for a fact that US treats pillar 2/3 withdrawals as fully taxable income if you are a US resident. So you would not only NOT save anything on taxes with 3a scheme but overall even LOSE some to US taxes.

Some other providers have no problems paying out just before your departute (=> you have to pay tax to residence canton) or while you’re in tax residency limbo and not registered anywhere (=> you pay tax to 3a institution’s canton). Just make sure to give them enough notice of your intentions.

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Isn’t it working as intended? Shouldn’t you should be resident in your new country when you stop being a tax resident in Switzerland?

(we already had that debate, it’s a fairly grey area to me to think you can get income that won’t be taxed by any country, and technically the Swiss tax is a withholding tax to incite people to declare it, it’s not meant to be tax revenue for Switzerland).

I’d be very surprised if that would pass an actual tax audit, if for some other reason someone gets audited, and given the amount of data sharing between countries now, that could be somewhat risky.

Edit: at least personally given some of the amounts involved I’d definitely consider moving first to a different country with favorable tax treatment before moving to the final destination :slight_smile:

You stop being a tax resident in Switzerland when you deregister (you become partial-year tax resident instead, they won’t tax your income after deregistration). It’s normal to not be a tax resident of any country for a bit of time until you settle elsewhere. For example by taking a long vacation in neutral waters/countries. It’s also possible to be a tax resident of multiple countries at the same time. If you try really hard and move often, you can even be a tax resident of no single country forever. So many options as you see.

Eh what? What audit is there to pass? Each country will have a specific date from which/till which it considers you its tax resident and generally doesn’t care very much what happens beyond that date. Except maybe for income generated inside the country even if you’re not a resident (dividends, rental income, contracting gigs, etc. generally are all still taxed locally to some degree), and possible double tax treaties provisions It is not completely out of the ordinary if there is a gap.

For France/Switzerland woudn’t Art 4 Al 4 mean that there can’t be a gap anyway?
https://www.admin.ch/opc/fr/classified-compilation/19660170/index.html

Tax residence != civil law residence.

And even if there’s no gap, there’s still two out of three choices left: withdraw 3a before the move (paying taxes just to CH) or after (likely paying taxes to your new country). VIAC made the choice for you.

How about just switching the funds to another 3a shortly before moving, where you can “make your own choice”?

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It’s great to have freedom to do tax evasion :slight_smile: (at least in the CH/FR case) /s

It wouldn’t be tax evasion to avoid income taxes on your 3a payout.

I doubt that saving a few bucks in taxes would be worth the hassle of trying to withdraw your 3a while being resident of nowhere. Sounds like an admin nightmare to me.

I wouldn’t know where to start. For example, just making sure your family were covered for healthcare while living nowhere seems like it would require a whole load of non standard and paperwork and I’m sure there would be loads of other unintended consequences I haven’t even thought of.

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It could actually be a lot of money… Compare ~5% Pillar 3a tax here to a 45% marginal income tax rate (easily attainable in France and many other countries). That’s 40k CHF for a 100k CHF 3rd pillar.

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Yes, but that’s quite a bit of hassle and needs more planning.

You forget to do it - you’re in for a tax surprise.

I’d rate that as a mini-hassle. I’ve moved my 3a multiple times.
And if u forget to do it before you’re at the new country you are in for a surprise regardless of which 3a your money is in.

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Most people here seem quite comfortable with planning their future. :smiley:
Seems to me like a fair option, and if it’s as easy as it was when I was moving my 3rd pillar from UBS → VIAC, it really is not that big of a hassle, and only takes a couple of days.

The topic is about France, the dual taxation agreement is pretty clear on those things. FYI it’s also not taxed at marginal income rate either (and when I looked I don’t think it was that far off from the tax rate used by Zurich canton for pension withdrawals, so it did not even seem overly punitive).

Whether they catch you/notice it with the existing data sharing agreement, I don’t know. Whether in that specific case you should have declared it, I’m fairly sure.

And if it’s really that easy to be a resident of nowhere, you could rotate between 2/3 countries and enjoy your tax free earnings from Irish ETFs (only 15% withholding from US, not income or capital gain taxes).
Given that no broker would let you open an account without declaring tax residency in a country, I doubt that actually work.

But you can still withdraw 2nd pillar to finance primary resident abroad?

Do any of you know whether the Portuguese tax waiver for pension assets applies to the pillar 3a as well pillars 1 & 2? I imagine it would. In that case, a short stay in Portugal (or a country with a similar regime) when withdrawal time comes around combined with reclaiming withholding tax as per the double taxation treaty could probably pay off.

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