Thanks for your perspective.
Do you confirm that IB does not charge any capital gain tax, as per swiss regulations?

IB system is a very good in my opinion, it is the same system that the traders there use... I should know, I used to be one of them!

Support staff seem fine to me, anytime I have had cause to deal with them I have been impressed.

Regarding tax, I haven't sold anything, but would expect IB to handle taxation of CG as per regulations.

EU citizen living in CH, trading with Interactive brokers or another US based online broker. Do I have to pay capital gains tax?

No CGT payable by CH residents.

Only applies to Swiss tax and if non professional!

Guys,

Another question on the real estate tax:
In case the account holder (US non-resident alien) passes away, the US will levy up to 40% estate tax on US assets over the value of $60,000 USD. This includes US-domiciled holdings such as ETFs, as well as cash sums in a US-based brokerage account.

Did anyone faced this issue? Are we liable for this?
The alternative would be to buy funds not-US domiciled?

Hi, I've just setup a IB account and am trying to fund it with either CHF or USD from my bank in Switzerland. For CHF it seems the only option is Wire and although there are several other options on the dropdown menu for USD the chat support tells me that I need use wire from Switzerland for USD as well.
It isn't a knockout to use Wire but I prefer to use IBAN/SWIFT to transfer and understood from some earlier comments in this thread that cheaper transfer options than Wire were accepted.
Thanks for any insights to an unexpected speed bump in getting this setup.
Also I'd consider Schwab if this was easier as individual trading costs are not going to be very high for my current investment strategy.
M

Wire transfer *is* SWIFT. They'll give you IBAN to wire funds to and any swiss bank should be able to do the task. Not for free of course, as it's international and not SEPA. Cheapest I've been charged was 2 CHF per transfer.

ivank, thanks, I haven't been doing a lot of international bank transfers lately. IB didn't provide an IBAN but did provide SWIFT and a lot of other bank info. I've submitted a wire transfer in USD from Swissquote, I'll report back on fees for future reference.

IBAN is a european thing. Their CHF account is in a UK, you'd get IBAN if you transferred CHF. For USD I guess they asked you to pay to a US bank, which don't use IBAN for numbering. SWIFT code + account number is equivalent to IBAN, these are the two main pieces it consist of anyway: number for a bank (instead of code) + account + check digits.

USD in goes to Citibank NY. If you are sending USD from one of Citibanks outside of the US there is no fee.

Swissquote charged only 2 USD to do that. Great! Thanks for the help!

Hi Ivan,

I need to correct that IBAN format is not exclusive to Europe, even some middle eastern countries use IBAN format nowadays (UAE for example). Furthermore, the IBAN format is not generated by just adding SWIFT and account numbers (BBAN), there's more to it. So it's always prudent to get the IBAN numbers from the beneficiary or beneficiary bank.

I found it strange that IB has its CHF account located in London, which makes all CHF deposits international payment and more expensive, although they have a big operation in Switzerland. I did mention this to IB but they seemed to be surprised also.

I found this very interesting article in the WSJ about non-US residents owning US assets, e.g. US shares, US mutual funds, ETF, etc. I thought it was worth sharing for all of you with an IB account.

"If you own U.S. situs assets, which includes things like investments in U.S. companies, real estate, or retirement accounts, but are a nonresident alien (NRA), you need to think about how your estate could be taxed on those assets when you die."

Please find the full article here: http://blogs.wsj.com/expat/2016/03/3...e-complicated/

I don't think it matters *at all* whether you own any of that through IB or any other broker. They'll all talk, and Uncle Sam will get you either way.

Things are much better if own US assets only indirectly, e.g. through an ETF, domiciled in some nice inheritance tax free country.

If you still want to trade when you are >60 just to be on the safe side you open a trust account (with members of your family).

so buying e.g. iShares ETFs domiciled in CH would be a safe bet (from US inheritance tax perspective)?

Yes. Ireland is also a popular choice for this

Since I didn't want to learn about estate tax, I bought the Irish based Vanguard ETFs. And my broker is Corner Trader. I can live with the stamp duty.