Moving to Switzerland to trade crypto

[Wizardo]

Hi, I'm from France and luckly I have no exit tax on crypto PNL, and no exit tax at all bellow 800K€.

So I intend to move as of early january next year to become a swiss resident.
I have checked and I can ask for a residency visa if i open a company or act as an entrepreneur. I don't really care if i need to open a Gmbh ( equivalent LLC) or a specific self employed status as long at it enable me to get the visa to stay long term.

I can then setup proper structure for an IT company (will be Gmbh for sure)+ my trading (either as personal investor or a prop firm).

Concerning the trading switzerland it's tricky as there is personnal and profesionnal investor law. I think I have good chance to be considered a professional if a do a good year, but otherwise i think that no matter the kind of trade they will just not care if the amount is less then 3-4 times my yearly salary ( the law say 1-1 but in practice i know multiple peope at 2-4 that never good any problem trading the stock market and declaring everything.

After checking the requirement for Gmbh I saw that under their new law FinIA, you need a dealer security license (license to become investment firm) if you trade crypto that are considered securities and is member of a trading venues. The problem are:
- the definition of securities is not clear ( and i haven t found an up to date list)
- as most exchange are not regulated by local law does they consider Binance, FTX, Huobi, Okex as trading venues ?
- the requirment for the license are not reachable by a solo individual as you need division of work force for compliance etc + a share capital of 1.5M that i don t have.

If you found a list of what is declared securities for them i could go make a company and just not trade those at all. But need to be clear not some interpretable definition where at the end of the year they can f**k you over and say "oh this one is a security take a good fine"

I was thinking to just not create a company and trade as an individual and wait to see if i got a 0% tax or a corporate tax on that income but in that scenario what would happen if i traded securities during that year ?

I have asked questions to the FINA administration but I'm still waiting their response.

 

[JackAlabama]

Hi, I'm from France and luckly I have no exit tax on crypto PNL, and no exit tax at all bellow 800K€.

So I intend to move as of early january next year to become a swiss resident.
I have checked and I can ask for a residency visa if i open a company or act as an entrepreneur. I don't really care if i need to open a Gmbh ( equivalent LLC) or a specific self employed status as long at it enable me to get the visa to stay long term.

I can then setup proper structure for an IT company (will be Gmbh for sure)+ my trading (either as personal investor or a prop firm).

Concerning the trading switzerland it's tricky as there is personnal and profesionnal investor law. I think I have good chance to be considered a professional if a do a good year, but otherwise i think that no matter the kind of trade they will just not care if the amount is less then 3-4 times my yearly salary ( the law say 1-1 but in practice i know multiple peope at 2-4 that never good any problem trading the stock market and declaring everything.

After checking the requirement for Gmbh I saw that under their new law FinIA, you need a dealer security license (license to become investment firm) if you trade crypto that are considered securities and is member of a trading venues. The problem are:
- the definition of securities is not clear ( and i haven t found an up to date list)
- as most exchange are not regulated by local law does they consider Binance, FTX, Huobi, Okex as trading venues ?
- the requirment for the license are not reachable by a solo individual as you need division of work force for compliance etc + a share capital of 1.5M that i don t have.

If you found a list of what is declared securities for them i could go make a company and just not trade those at all. But need to be clear not some interpretable definition where at the end of the year they can f**k you over and say "oh this one is a security take a good fine"

I was thinking to just not create a company and trade as an individual and wait to see if i got a 0% tax or a corporate tax on that income but in that scenario what would happen if i traded securities during that year ?

I have asked questions to the FINA administration but I'm still waiting their response.

You just trade your own funds. No need for a license. If you take on thrid party cash, you need the licenses.
You best setup AG and bring in your crypto as capital (this is possible), with that AG you can do your IT services and also trade.
You also absolutely want to have a corp structure esp if you have no full time day job as otherwise they consider you a pro trader and you pay heavy tax and even heavier social sec.
Look for a good advisor / lawyer / fiduciary office for assistance and don't engage in solo runs (you might could do in the French part due to no language barrier, but these areas are bad for business).
You best setup your corp in either Zug, Walden or Schwyz but you can live wherever.

 

[Wizardo]

Ok thank you for the information I didn t know about that you could put crypto into an AG. If you have any relative link speaking about that i'm realy interested to read it.
I'm fluent in english also so can read swiss law in english or french. Don t understand a thing about german though.

Yeah I know i'm going to need a advisor at some point, just trying to reduce the number of hours he will charge me with doing a lot of research before hand as 400-500$ the note can go up quite quickly. Know a couple person that still didn t have anything interesting after 10K just trying to not be in this case. I have french fiduciary expert friend so if the text is in french even if the vocabulary is not the exact same from country to country i can be helped a little bit before flexing the money.

Thank you for the recommendation of location and i was also considering Zug and Schwyz so it conforts me.

 

[JackAlabama]

Ok thank you for the information I didn t know about that you could put crypto into an AG. If you have any relative link speaking about that i'm realy interested to read it.
I'm fluent in english also so can read swiss law in english or french. Don t understand a thing about german though.

Yeah I know i'm going to need a advisor at some point, just trying to reduce the number of hours he will charge me with doing a lot of research before hand as 400-500$ the note can go up quite quickly. Know a couple person that still didn t have anything interesting after 10K just trying to not be in this case. I have french fiduciary expert friend so if the text is in french even if the vocabulary is not the exact same from country to country i can be helped a little bit before flexing the money.

Thank you for the recommendation of location and i was also considering Zug and Schwyz so it conforts me.

Let me google this for you )) you can search for the relevant keywords by translating them into German and much more will come out.

https://jusletter.weblaw.ch/fr/dam/publicationsystem/articles/jusletter/2019/991/kryptowahrungen-als-_bd9a3f657f/Jusletter_kryptowahrungen-als-_bd9a3f657f_fr.pdf

GmbH oder AG Gründung mit Bitcoins | Fasoon

Ist es möglich eine GmbH oder AG mit Bitcoins zu gründen? Wir beantworten diese schwierige Frage und erklären wie es funktioniert.

fasoon.ch

 

[Wizardo]

I found that Zug is quite friendly to crypto much more that i though.

Tax payment in crypto for business and individual ( almost all taxes are availables with a 1% fee and using BTC ETH) Zug Tax website

Didn t found official Zug website speaking about it but a lot of other places say that you can use contribution in kind to add crypto to your company. The drawback is that you need more paperwork and so need more money from your laywer/fuduciary advisor and i guess maybe some independant expert i haven t checked yet.

To set up a company using contributions in kind, you need a contribution in kind agreement, an incorporation report or an audit certificate, which have to be filed with the Commercial Register for verification (source)

Zug is a little expensive to rent because of all this optimization for company tax and individual tax.
Here some maps for High Revenu taxation ( ofc not all the revenu is taxed that way but that give an idea of who tax how much) Individual Company