From: Laurent Miéville < >
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 1999 14:04:02 -0500 (EST)
Status: RO

        
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Dear Swiss-lister(s),

Following the email of Louis Perrochon and Sarah Paris, I will explain what I did when I still was in the USA concerning the income tax here in the US as well as in Switzerland.

If you are filing as a non-resident for tax purposes, I believe that you don't have the possibility to declare income bound to outside accounts and the form TD F 90.22.1 should not be filled out. The income on these accounts in Switzerland will be taxed at 35%.

When you become resident for tax purposes, you may declare the foreign accounts you have and you will have to pay a 30% tax on the income bound to them, including capital gain.
In order to prevent to pay twice the tax on regular interest income (35% in CH, 30% in US), you can fill out a swiss form(form 82 I) where you ask to get back the tax which was taken out from your interest income in Switzerland. By showing you are actually declaring this amount to the Internal revenue service in the US, you will get back the tax taken by Switzerland on them.

At the end the difference is small (5%) and you should take into account the time spent filling out the forms and the fact that your capital gains will be taxed in US, without mentionning any patriotism inclining you to let the swiss administration get the money instead of the IRS.

In order to be compliant with the rules, I did the whole procedure in 98 and I received the money later on from the swiss administration.

For those of you interested in having the swiss form to claim the 35% tax, you can get them through the consulate as I did or directly through the following address:

Federal Tax administration of Switzerland
Main division for Federal Direct Tax , anticipatory tax and stamp duty
Eigerstrasse 65
CH-3003 Bern
fax 031-322 71 98

Following the filing, I received a new version of the forms (valid for 1st of february 98 onwards because of a new treaty). Check with the consulate if they received the new ones too. Last but not least, you will have to have them stamped by a public notary. I found one on stanford campus which did the job for a few dollars.

Hope this will help,

The best

Laurent Mieville

-- 
Please respond to Laurent.mieville_at_rectorat.unige.ch
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