r/SwissPersonalFinance

I’m Portuguese, currently working in Switzerland, and considering maxing out my Pillar 3a (Finpension, 100% stocks) mainly for the tax benefits. I earn around 100k/year and, since I have more than 80k in assets, I now need to do a full tax return.

Let’s say the plan is to return to Portugal in ~5 years.

From what I understand, when withdrawing the Pillar 3a, Switzerland charges a relatively low withdrawal tax (~5%)

My question is:

If I withdraw the Pillar 3a before or around moving back to Portugal, would Portugal tax that money again? Or does the Switzerland-Portugal double taxation agreement avoid this?

If Portugal taxes it again, it almost feels like the 3a may not even be worth it for someone planning to leave Switzerland after a few years.

Would appreciate insights from people who actually went through this or spoke with a tax advisor.

The rates jumped drastically between last week and this week. The progression of rates has been so volatile during the last couple months, it’s possible the rates drop lower again or get significantly worse during the next couple weeks. We close mid June. I have a 10 year fixed rate offer for 1.57%. I‘m still getting saron offers for .8%. The uncertainty or variability of the saron is not the problem, but I can genuinely see a strong possibility that we are beginning an era closer to 2008. We won’t have amoritization, because we‘re putting enough down. Anyone have any interesting opinions? 1.57 offer ends today, and all the offers I got this week for fixed rates are terrible.

Hi

I just got a message from Postfinance that they are ending cashback on their credit cards (not debit cards) in june this year and replacing it by a new "SmartPoints" cashback program: https://www.postfinance.ch/en/private/paying-saving/smartpoints.html

With Smartpoints you opt in and for what I understood on the positive side it's applying Smartpoints that you can turn into cashback for other payments, be it using their debit card, Twint or as before, their credit cards + other Postfinance services. - Sounds good?

After skimming initially over the offer I have at least 2 things that make hesitating (and I try not to be to sarcastic):

- It's "all or nothing", meaning that you have to (seemingly?) opt in completely, which means that you agree to all things being tracked by SmartPoints or none. With cashback on the credit card it was never much cashback, but I could by using either the Debit or Credit card.
- Payout of points has to be done manually by you, they expire after 24 months after being earned. If you forget them, they'll expire. With the previous cashback it was automatically transferred to your primary account I think twice a year. (See: "How long are my SmartPoints valid for?")

Is it just me, or is it another move by PF to (slightly, but not to much) enshitify their service and get more data from us by offering some earnings that we can turn into money?

- No increase in official retirement age (65 stays)

- More incentives to work after 65 (higher allowance and income counts more toward your pension)

- No cap on deferring AHV (currently 70) as you can boost your pension longer if you keep working.

- Early retirement gets harder by rising min. age in 2nd pillar from 58 → 63 (with exceptions).

- More / broader AHV contributions that include benefits and higher rates for some self-employed.

- Dividends partially treated as AHV-relevant income if considered “excessive” (to prevent avoiding contributions).

- Possible higher VAT or contributions depending on funding of the 13th AHV pension.

I'm curious to know what you all think about the impact of this reform regarding our plans to retire early in Switzerland.

Hi all,

I moved to Switzerland back in 2024 and ive been struggling to find hoe i can track my portfolio to show the final value in chf.

Previously I was with interactive brokers but now im forced to use ubs and the platform is not great for tracking the portfolio.

What platforms do you guys use? Ive tried yahoo finance (which is quite good but doesnt really show realized gains well and in general performance but if you guys have any tips on how to best use it happy to learn). I also tried portfolio performance which is ok but still not so visual for me. I found recently Parqet which seems visually very nice and also has factsheets etc in the app but the prices aren't always updating correctly, sometimes they have delays of an entire day for some stocks.

Any suggestions from you guys?

Hello everybody.

I am curious on what yall would do.

I wanna start putting money into 3a, but dont know who the best would be.

Likely i want that 3a be invested etc.

Finpension looks good, but what is the usual recommendation ?

Since i dont wanna waste my time and money spending it the wrong Site.

Would appreciate anyone.

Regards

Long-ish post sorry. I think this fills a gap I never see addressed here.

I came to ZH in 2017 from Stuttgart. Engineer, B-permit converted to C last year, in my late 40s. My income is fully CHF but a chunk of my parents' inheritance landed in 2022 in EUR and stayed in EUR because converting at that rate would have been criminal. Around 165k EUR currently.

For about eighteen months that sat in my UBS EUR sub-account earning 0.0 (yes zero, they don't pay anything on EUR retail balances unless you're private banking tier). I was paralysed.

The conventional Swiss advice is "convert and put it in your 3a/IBKR strategy" but that locks the currency move at whatever EURCHF is doing on that single day.

What I ended up doing, and what I'd do differently:

Bulk parking.

I moved about 90k into a Raisin/WeltSparen ladder through their CH onboarding. 12, 24, 36 month tranches across three different EU banks with deposit-guarantee coverage up to 100k per bank per country. Yields between 2.9 and 3.4 at time of opening. Boring but the floor is now real instead of negative-real.

Money-market piece. About 35k into Xtrackers EUR Overnight (XEON on Xetra, accessible via IBKR or Swissquote). ESTR-tracking, pays ECB rate minus a small spread. Liquid in T+2. This replaced what was sitting at UBS doing nothing.

Yield enhancer, small. Roughly 15k spread across two P2P platforms with conservative loan models. One is LANDE which is ECSP-licensed Latvian, agriculture loans with first-rank mortgage at low LTV. The other is Maclear, a Swiss-based platform doing SME loans with collateral agent rather than buyback.

Quick aside because someone will ask: is Maclear FINMA licensed? No. It's a member of PolyReg SRO which covers AML/KYC under the Swiss FINMA AML regime, not investment-firm supervision.

That's materially different from what Mintos has in Latvia (MiFID II with the €20k investor compensation scheme). I picked both intentionally because they have different failure modes and different regulatory backstops, which is the actual point of diversification but I'm not pretending one substitutes for the other.

Bond bridge. The remaining 25k went into individual short-duration EUR investment grade corporates bought directly through Swissquote, not a fund, ladder out to 2028.

Tax side because nobody mentions it. Interest income is fully taxable as income on your CH return.

No Verrechnungssteuer because foreign-source. Wealth tax on year-end balance same as a bank account. You do declare on DA-1 to claim any withholding back where applicable. P2P specifically you have to keep platform statements because the cantonal tax office has no idea what these platforms are and will ask.

What I would not do, looking back. I would not have sat on it for eighteen months. The opportunity cost was something like 5k of safe interest I left on the table while overthinking. And I would not have converted everything to CHF in one shot in 2022 even though half the friends in my circle did. Currency-cost-averaging over multiple years if you must convert.

Nothing here is financial advice obviously. Just one CH-resident's path to making EUR cash not be dead weight. Curious if others have done a different mix, especially anyone using EUR-denominated bond funds traded on Swiss exchanges (I avoided them because of TER vs my direct-bond approach but maybe wrong).

Hi everyone,

New to the thread, but some years into investing : )

I understand that for Swiss investors, US-domiciled ETFs can offer an interesting tax advantage, mainly because the 15% US withholding tax can be reclaimed through the DA-1.

That said, is there any tax difference between US-domiciled distributing and accumulating ETFs? Or from a Swiss tax perspective, are they treated essentially the same?

Thanks for sharing your experience and thoughts !

Cheers

Hi all,
reaching out as I have good experience with reddit, and googling alone did not resolve it. Reaching out to professional advisors resulted in declines.

I moved from Germany to Switzerland and face the fact that tax declaration needs to be done for both countries in 2025.

Part0: What tax declaration first?
Currently I consider to first do the german one, and then use the result to also add it to the CH one. I hope this helps to prevent "Doppelbesteuerung" showing I have paid something already.

Part 1: Related to filing the german Tax declaration 2025: What things to be aware of in the year of moving?
- Seems like I must state the money I earned in CH in 2025 after moving. What is the gross and net salary I need to state in the german tax declaration, that I earned in CH? Just the Gross/Net or can there be something deducted?
- Other general tips related to that, other things that can be deducted or stated additionally? I could imagine adding some costs for the moving, but also got a small amount from the new employer.

Part 2: Related to Financial investments: How to prevent german tax on gains, as not yet sold?
- Have some ETF in a german bank, and a very low amount crypto (anyway kept longer than 1 year). I informed the bank that I moved to update my tax status from DE to CH. I did no sell any of my investments. German tax declaration I will do with the tax statement, but I am more curious to have a way forward how to sell it in the future, and not pay german tax on gains, as I am not a resident anymore.

Part 3: Filing the CH Tax statement
- I have half of a house gifted from the parents, that they live in and the have lifelong "Niessbrauchrecht", so full usage of the house. In the gifting contract, a value is mentioned. But the usable value for me is 0. How to state that in the tax declaration in CH?

Curious how you dealt with Part 0-3, looking forward to your feedback.
Do you guys think its manageable to fill it alone, or better continue searching for a tax advisor?

Thank you!

PS, tried to do it witout AI. If structure not clear, just let me know 😊

Hi everyone,

I’m 20 years old and about to finish my apprenticeship. I’ll be starting my first full-time job in August and would like to start investing long-term.

My current plan looks like this:

• Pillar 3a: around CHF 600 per month, preferably invested rather than just in a savings account
• I’m considering doing my Pillar 3a through Saxo as well
• I’ll have around CHF 800 left each month for additional saving
• Out of that, I’d like to invest around CHF 500 per month into ETFs
• The rest would stay as regular savings / emergency fund

I’m unsure about Pillar 3a for this year. Since I’ll still be in my apprenticeship for 8 months and only start earning a proper salary in August, I’m wondering whether contributing to Pillar 3a in 2026 is really worth it from a tax perspective. My taxes probably won’t be that high yet. Would it make more sense to start Pillar 3a properly from January 2027, or is it still worth contributing from August 2026?

I also already have around CHF 2,000 invested in an MSCI World ETF through Yuh. I’m now considering doing my future investing through Saxo. Ideally, I would like to have both my Pillar 3a and my regular ETF investing with Saxo. Would you just leave the Yuh position there and start investing through Saxo from August onward? Or would you sell/transfer it and keep everything in one place?

For my regular ETF investing, I’m thinking of keeping it simple with 1–2 broadly diversified ETFs. What would you recommend for a long-term strategy? Something like FTSE All-World, MSCI World + Emerging Markets, or something else?

My main questions are:

1. Is Pillar 3a worth starting already from August, even though I’ll only have 4 months of proper income in 2026?
2. Should I just leave my existing ETF position at Yuh?
3. Is Saxo a good choice for both Pillar 3a and long-term ETF investing?
4. Which 1–2 ETFs would you recommend for a simple long-term portfolio?
5. Am I missing anything important?

My goal is to start early and invest sensibly, but without making things unnecessarily complicated. Thanks a lot for your input!

Whats your target NW, and how far away are you from it? Whats your age?

I bought some gold and silver (allocation) last year and I need to declare it on my Geneva tax return for Wealth Tax. Does anyone know now please?

1. Is this a "Releve fiscal papier" or a "compte banciare ou postal". There's no IBAN, so I'm leaning towards the relevé fiscal papier.
2. BullionVault reports the holdings in kg on 31st December, but also the total holdiing in GBP. To make matters easy, I'd like to convert the GBP into CHF and report this figure. Is this acceptable or do I really have to mess around converting into ounces and using the official metal pricing numbers?

Thanks in advance for any insights.

Hello,

I have been holding a crypto wallet for a couple of years now but have never declared it on my tax reports (bad, I know). The value does not exceed the cantonal threshold (I have about 60k total value) and I have never exceeded it. I have no other assets as I am just a student. I contacted a tax specialist who told me to just declare it without even submitting a "lettre de dénonciation spontanée". I am not sure whether I should follow his advice or not... Thanks

Edit: SOLVED its the Risikokostenbeitrag thats responsible for the difference. Not very useful for me as im not married but oh well. Ty for the quick answers, yall are great :)

Hello all,

today I had the pleasure of reading my second pillar Vorsorgeausweis. Including gems such as a 1.25% interest. What did surprise me however is my yearly contributions, they seem very low at 3887 CHF per year.

I make 82k of which 55.5k are insured. So far so terrible. But on my Lohnausweis I get 188 CHF per month deducted, knowing my generous employer matches 1:1 that comes out at 376 CHF per month or 4512 CHF per year. Which if my math is correct is about 625 CHF more than what is stated on my Vorsorgeausweis.

Does anyone have any resources or insights into why that might be? Or am I missing something?

Also if you know of a good 2nd pillar im happy to hear about them, we are only 3 employees in CH and im the only swiss one so I might be able to sway HQ in Germany towards a better provider. Currently we are with Zurich Vita.

Ty all in advance :)

Hi - can anyone recommend a good independent financial advisor that can take care of things end to end?

I’ve been reviewing my own spending habits in Switzerland and noticed that currency exchange and foreign payments can get quite expensive with traditional banks.

Especially CHF → EUR conversions and card usage abroad.

Recently I started testing fintech alternatives like Revolut mainly for travel and EUR spending.

In practice, the FX margin seems lower compared to my Swiss bank, but I’m curious about long-term perspectives.

Has anyone here done a proper cost comparison between Swiss banks and fintech solutions over time?

Hi there
I have no idea how to do what u guys do in the excel sheet but i want/need to learn it.
Is there a specific tutorial or anything u could recommend? I work based on hours and struggle a bit with planning my expenses because the amount varies like crazy amounts.

I can use Excel on it's own and use the one or the other "formula"
I just have no idea on how to enter it and start something decent.

Every input appriciated thank you very much in advance ❤️