https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp...N9aFsAGf3Z_4Bw
Could you explain this?
But when I compare the ETFs to their index, they don't really seem to diverge:
Luck
I don't believe it. How can you say it's luck, when they are hugging the index very tightly for years? Where are the taxes and running costs buried? Do they discount them from the dividends?
You do realize than those etfs charge rather small commissions of 0.10% and less? Over a year 4 year period, even compounded, that's still a small number and less than day-to-day volatility, and so hard to spot in the graphs.
Also not all ETFs are created equal, there are differences in structures and what they are allowed to do. A very pure S&P ETF is SPY: it does full replication, has to collect and keep dividends in cash until distribution and can't loan out the securities. Other, newer ETFs may make some compromises on these principles to deliver slightly higher returns at the cost of slightly higher risks.
Well VOO and VUSA are just like that, full replication, no securities lending. A fee of 0.07% should underpeform the ETF vs index by 1% after 15 years.
Let's take a better example. the IDUS (iShares S&P500 Distributing) has a TER of 0.40% and it still hugs the S&P500 tightly over the period of 10 years (should have diverged by 3.5%).
All these 3 engage in lending
IDUS has some weird thing happening to it in 2008, maybe just a data error in google finance, so let's not look at 10y performance for it. On 5 years graph it is often trailing behind S&P performance by 1-1.5% roughly as expected. It's an Irish fund, so there could be a difference in closing prices between them due to different closing times of American and European markets.
I suspect charges are taken from income, the income distribution is smaller
Well thanks for proving me wrong. I was misinformed by JustETF, they write "securities lending: no". Yet in the KIID of VUSA attached on the website of JustETF it says:
Coming back to my earlier question, do you have any idea why I was not charged any tax on VUSA, but 20% on VEUR? Will I be able to reclaim it? Does it even make sense to do it, since 20% is probably below my marginal tax rate?
No idea
Yes, you should be able by filing DA-1.
You have to declare the stock on your tax return and pay the swiss tax on the dividend either way. So if you don't reclaim, you'd pay the taxes on it twice.
I was earning under 120'000 in 2015, paying Quellensteuer. How would this even work?
Almost certainly nothing will happen, However, if you do earn substantially less than 120k, you won't get the full withholding tax back either when you get a C permit & need to do a return....... Ivank probably won't have come across that chestnut as he assumes people earn 180k.