A separate account at IBKR now, but mostly by accident.[$] I’m tempted to only include the long only IBKR account (and my legacy Swissquote account) in the tax declaration, but might declare both IBKR accounts.
Decision is pending a chat with my investor friend whose dad was a Steuerkommissär (the same one as in this post in one of the “professional trader” topics).
You get taxed for the coupon payments you receive in the given tax year, regardless of when you bought the corresponding bond.
That’s why – if you want to invest in T-Bills (or other treasuries) you pick one with a very low coupon.
Your return on the treasury is essentially determined by the Fed on the short end of the curve.
Let’s assume you want to hold a treasury over the course of 12 months or so. It’s (tax wise, in Switzerland) not wise to buy a fresh 52 week T-Bill with a currently – let’s assume – 4% coupon (or whatever it is now). It’s better to buy a treasury that matures in 12 months with a very low coupon (e.g. issued in the ZIRP era) with 0.25% of 0.5% coupons. You’ll be able to buy the 0.5% treasury for about 96.5 cents on the dollar. You’ll get your coupon payments (of 0.5% on the nominal) but most of your gains will come from capital gain of the bond until its maturity.
$ Until Spring this year I held everything at IBKR in my one (and then only) IBKR account. Wanted to make sure that my wife can easily access funds and cash at IBKR in case I rode my bicycle into the river on my Summer Rhine tour).
When I asked IBKR how to best get her access, they recommended to create a new login account for her, a new investment account in both of our names, and then transfer the funds from my old investment account to the new joint investment account.
When creating her login account I answered truthfully about her investment background (essentially none) which – unbeknowst to me – led to the new joint investment account being limited to what was allowed only for my wife to trade and hold.
When transferring the securities from my old investment account to the new joint account, stuff like options wouldn’t be transferred since my wife’s investment background is to limited for her (even in the joint account) to hold let alone trade options …
So I’m now stuck with my short Puts in my old account (secured by treasuries) while all the long equity positions are in our joint account. Since the bond also counts towards wealth, I kind of feel obliged to declare it, but since the coupon is just 0.5% (deliberately!) I suppose I don’t care much on getting the withholding tax back on the coupon payments. Actually, I pay more tax by declaring the coupon payments than just the 15% IBKR collects for Uncle Sam.