Could you say more on what type of withholding taxes can be deducted ?
I have supplementary US withholding taxes (15%) deducted from dividends distributed by US stocks held in by my Swiss brokerage. Last year I tried to reclaim these but the Geneva tax authorities rejected my demand.
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I think you’d be very lucky to get the Swiss tax office to refund taxes taken in the USA…
For US WHT, the dividend WHT rate is 30%.
If you are Swiss resident, you would normally file a W8-BEN with your broker so that US withholds only the amount under the treaty rates. For most cases WHT is reduced by from 30% to 15%.
So you save 15% upfront and then for the remaining 15% you can claim as an offset against your Swiss taxes in your Swiss tax return so that you ultimately have no adverse economic impact from the WHT (assuming you have enough taxable Swiss income to absorb the tax).
I can only speak for IBKR - they only take the mandatory 15%, not the entire 30%. These 15% cannot be reclaimed back from the US, so you fill a DA-1 form to offset it in your swiss tax declaration.
Exactly this - in Zurich you use the DA1 form to do this and you are reimbursed pretty quickly.