At White Lighthouse Investment Management, we encourage all clients to meet all their tax reporting and payment requirements in whichever local, state, or federal jurisdictions they must report and pay tax to. We are not tax advisors. We do not file tax returns for clients and cannot offer legal advice in respect to taxes though we know many competent advisors who can.

What we can do is help you and/or your tax advisor(s) to determine your taxable events for any given time-period using reporting directly from your bank or brokerage firm and/or from our own reporting systems. Don’t ever hesitate to ask for our assistance here as our information systems contain a vast amount of information and flexibility in reporting with respect to your accounts. 

At White Lighthouse Investment Management, we do have an in-depth understanding of US taxes and use this knowledge to help our clients make good decisions. In addition, we understand the complications of cross-border rules with respect to US citizens and taxpayers that live overseas, non-Americans living in the US, and mixed nationality couples. We also have a good working knowledge of the Swiss taxation system.

Additionally, we can engage in tax planning both inside your investment portfolio and outside. This may have to do with what types of investments to buy or sell which investments belong in which accounts, the timing of events or gift and estate taxation. This type of planning work can be done together with you or in conjunction with other professionals such as tax advisors or estate planning attorneys.

If you have accounts with us in the United States, your most common tax reports (1099s) are generally ready by the middle to end of February. These will include dividends, income, capital gains, and losses and now my management fees that have come out of taxable accounts. Other information that will be reported will be IRA distributions. For IRA contributions, the form 5498 is generally produced by your brokerage firm but this is often done well after your tax return has been filed. If you have contributed don’t forget to report it to your tax advisor.

For Swiss resident account holders who have accounts at Swissquote, by default, we started last year to request the bank to produce their official tax report. The bank charges 100 CHF plus VAT for this report. A few clients have opted out of this which may make sense when there are very few taxable events in each year. If you would like to opt out or confirm if you have done so already, please let us know.