What is the stamp duty update and how does it affect my price?

Updated 3 years ago by Carina Wetzlhütter

What is the stamp duty?

The Swiss stamp duty is a tax which is charged when you buy and sell investment products.

This tax has to be paid by both, the seller and the buyer. You will see this charge with all other Swiss investment service providers as well. It is still good to be aware of it and how much you pay.

You don't have to do anything by yourself, the tax is charged automatically.

How much is the stamp duty?

Products traded on the Swiss stock exchange: 0.075% of purchase & sales price

Products traded on foreign stock exchanges: 0.15% of purchase & sales price

Stamp duty examples: "Set up of plan"

How does the update affect my price at Selma?

As a current investor, who started in 2020 or earlier, you already got the bigger part of the stamp duty covered by Selma. This was done when your initial investments were bought to build up your plan.

In the future, the stamp duty (similarly to the product prices) would be paid when additional investments are bought or sold.

Now, your price is put together by:

• the Selma service fee – 0.47 – 0.68% per year
• the products' own costs – avg. 0.22% per year
• the stamp duty per trade – 0.075 – 0.15%

If you are waiting on reimbursements of stamp duty payments in 2020 you will, of course, get these deposited on your account.

Why is the stamp duty not included anymore?

So far, Selma has been one of the very few investment providers in Switzerland who cover and reimburse the stamp duty. Even though our team consists of technology experts, we had to recognize the fact that systems of banks are not made for reimbursing the stamp duty.

The reimbursements of stamp duty have led to long waiting times and even missing transactions on clients' accounts – a problem which has been growing with a growing client base and would only become worse.

This is why we have made a difficult decision to not include the stamp duty in the future, even if this goes against Selma's transparency principles of creating the easiest possible fee structure for investing.

By not having to service the reimbursement process continuously, Selma's team gets the opportunity to put allocate resources to very important projects. Selma's product team can now focus on new features for clients and on improvements of internal processes which allows us to keep fees low and maybe even lower them in the future.

When will I pay stamp duty in the future?

• When Selma adjusts your investments based on market changes

• When you buy new investments
• When you take out your money and sell your investments

Stamp duty example: "Average investment adjustment"

The example is based on one of the biggest adjustments Selma has done so far. Due to the coronavirus crisis in 2020, Selma sold precious metals for clients in April and invested the money in other products which prices had gotten cheaper.

How did we do?

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