Yes, but careful - this doesn’t mean just because this criterion is fulfilled you’re not a private investor anymore. It’s just one factor in the whole picture of classification.
It’s also very interesting that in the Kreisschreiben they explicitly differentiate “Anlegen” (investing) and “gewerbsmässiger Handel” (commerical trading of securities). I think the caution on your side is justified, especially if you do more than like 50 trades a quarter and are a stock picker. If you’re buy-and holding a world ETF for years, you should pretty much be safe, no matter how high the interest payments are (because the whole case can’t be rated as that of a commercial securities trader).
Note that after the tax year 2028, we don’t really know how all of this will work… but you should be pretty cautious with margin and frequent trading.
If we look at actual commercial traders btw. they use high leverages (3-6x), all while trading multiple times a day and potentially using derivative trading instruments for even more leverage… they also usually have a turn over of x-times their portfolio value.
The classification is a binary one, and “kann von einer privaten Vermögensverwaltung nicht mehr die Rede sein” completely rules out one of the two possibilities.
That said, you should give it a try, after all your complaint that led to this little back-and-forth has been demonstrated baseless. Subject to your liquid wealth, borrowing 1 million is a complete no-brainer.
I am sorry but I don’t read it that way - it is explicitly stated multiple times through the document that the whole case has to be the one of a commerical securities trader (and single criteria neither make or break your case in an isolated inspection). Unless you are a tax lawyer or something, I would still suggest having that checked by one if someone plans to do this. If we’re actually talking about big money, a 30’ consultation will cost less than 200 CHF…
In practical terms, this could be abused as well, especially if you relize large capital losses (just take a loan in USD to be able to deduct them from income)… So your proclaimed automatism would be very unfavorable for the tax authorities in such cases.
First of all, no it’s not baseless… you’re completely ignoring the rest of the document and taking a single sentence out of context. Even if you’d pay more intrest than you have Dividends/Coupon payments, it’s for example highly unlikely you’d get classified as a commercial trader, if you only made like 10K in cap gains… your claim that this is automatic has no basis not even in the very document we’re talking abut.
As for the 1M loan - I would do that if my portfolio was about 3M large, since it’s much smaller than that, this is not something I can do without overleveraging myself helplessly… Moreso, I can’t lock in the intrest rate for such a long period of time.
While it’s true that all aspects need to be considered, it’s nonetheless also true that any one criterion can alone compensate for the absence of others. And since trade volume and credit financing take center stage, the amount of credit financing owed relative to how much is earned has been declared as such a single determining criterion.
Are there any numbers how many private people in Switzerland are considered professional traders? Unfortunately I don‘t have any. But judging from the absence of any testimonials I assume the number is quite low.
But I’d be surprised if it even were dozens per year. Who isn’t categorised as wealth management will probably use a company with a favorable domicile.
Meh. Convenience for the people would be allowing to upload a stock transaction JSON or excel file in the tax return. Not depriving people of opportunity gains of investing the tax money.