we're expecting a baby, and one thing we want to do is open an account in the baby's name and regularly deposit some money.
UBS seems to have a "savings account extra", which pays 1.50%, which seems decent for a brick and mortar bank...
I was hoping to find somewhere which would also let us buy/hold gold ETFs would be nice, but not really a must...
Any ideas/suggestions/advice?
OOC why do you specifically want an account in the baby's name as opposed to opening a new personal or joint (with your partner) account at a bank/broker (or alternatively just virtually allocate some portion of an existing account) and move baby funds there? Just the ease of accounting for different money piles or something else?
All other bank-provided options just lock you in and you have no freedom to do what and when you please with it.
I'm a firm believer in "the easiest money to save, is the one you don't have access to".
So looking for something that if in 10 years I change my mind, something happens, whatever, I don't say "let me dip into this pot to make ends meet". I also want to be able to tell family "you know what, rather than buying yet another onesie / toy /etc - put a few bucks into the account
Does that also count abroad? I was thinking of opening a savings account abroad, as looking around I can find >5% guaranteed interest accounts, which seems interesting... even a 50k starting amount, with 500chf a month contributed, over 18 years works out to 290k chf with the interest compounded.
e.g. the Indian banks are offering USD/EUR accounts in the 6%-7% range with no export limitations, which suddenly is VERY interesting. Even closer to home, I could get close to 5% in the UK...
Then it falls under "gifts" once you hand it to them afaik.
All international wealth and income count for taxation (at least for determining the rate, if not also being taxed).
Those 5+% are definitely not on CHF, so when you do it in EUR/USD/GBP, you are taking an additional currency risk; and they are only higher because they are expected to decline vs. CHF (interest rate parity).
If you also spend in those currencies, it might make sense though, but that's a personal situation and choice.
Best CHF savings account rates are now above 1.5% (e.g. with LLB).
On the other hand, if it's a 15+ years time horizon, I'd consider equity investments vs. just savings account.
Thanks - we are tax resident in multiple countries and spend/earn in EUR/USD/GBP fairly often, so not really an issue there.
Several of the Indian banks also offer CHF accounts with high interest (caveat is you need to be a NRI/OCI holder, so I need to go through that process to renew mine as it was something I did when I was in Uni as a way to rack up another nationality )...
That said, I can't figure our who gets taxed.
From Credit suisse:
There's a lot of information online for married parents (not the case), or for separated parents (also not the case); but not for normal parents who aren't married.
At present, we submit two separate tax declarations (as not married). I'm half-guessing that it's probably the parent who earns more that gets the child's assets "added" (due to that being the parent that gets the monthly allowance), but this is purely a guess.
The former can't be used for anything else, but the difficulty is then doing the transfer. We had one with UBS and the process was an utter shambles, taking three months, two branch visits and finally a formal complaint to simply get it moved from my contract to theirs.
The latter is much more flexible - it's really just a promise to the bank that it's a child saving (/investment) account, to get better rates.
I am not sure there is gift tax involved when you give assets to your minor child as the money still stay on your tax liability. Re international wealth - I think only the foreign real state is not taxed (but as you said used for the tax rate computation), the rest is taxed directly
I am not sure to be honest, but here I found this:
Basically it says that if no-one is paying alimonies, you split the assets 50/50 (although says “if the parents contribute in the same way to the child maintenance”, so it still leaves the open question of what happens when no alimonies are involved but maintenance is unbalanced).
Either way, I think that it is in your interest to split assets 50/50 instead of actually assign more to the more earning parent (since then you would be getting higher tax rate on the child assets/income).
It’s probably also relevant in what % the parents contribute to the assets, e.g. if one parent puts the money in the child’s account and then the parents split the tax liability - in some sense you just transferred a bunch of money to your non-marries partner but avoiding the gift tax, so probably not good.
Overall I think the fair approach would simply be to split the tax liability in the % of how much both of you contribute to the child’s money - but you can always ping the tax office and they are usually friendly and responsive
You wouldn't hand over large sums of money saved/invested for them to a minor, rather when they become adults (18 or whatever).
In short, yes, a jugendsparkonto, or child's account, will be in your tax filing's along with all your other accounts in terms of Steuerwert and Bruttertag.
In case you need a local professional to help with advice and filing, feel free to ask.
Nonetheless, congrats to you and your growing family!