Skip to content
Solved

SAM121615 | Returns: individuals returns: Swiss Tax agreement

From HM Revenue & Customs · Self Assessment Manual

Background

An agreement on the taxation of Swiss investments held by UK residents came into effect on 6 April 2012. Under the terms of this agreement tax is deducted at source by the Swiss Authorities and the taxpayer can either

  • Use the Swiss tax deducted as a (refundable) tax credit against their UK liability

Or

  • Treat the Swiss tax as satisfying the total UK liability on that income

Note: The UK/Swiss tax co-operation agreement ended on 31 December 2016, but remittance basis users may still need to claim credit for, or a refund of, tax deducted prior to that date if the income is remitted in a later year. There is therefore a limited number of customers that this guidance will relate to.

Tax return processing

If the taxpayer elects for a refundable tax credit, they are instructed to return the Swiss tax as Special Witholding Tax in column D on page F3 of the SA106, then the tax return can be processed as normal and no further action is required.

If the taxpayer elects for the Swiss tax to cover their UK liability to tax on the Swiss income, they will make the claim in the ‘Additional Information’ box on the tax return. In these cases, the automatic SA tax calculation will not produce the correct result therefore the SEES SA Tax calculator has been updated from 2012-13 to deal with these cases.

Note: If the return is amended, the Swiss tax credit will have to be recalculated using the SEES SA Tax calculator.

SEES SA Tax calculator

This calculator can be found in Excel under SEES, Full tax calculators, 2013-14 SA Tax Calculator (Main). Capture all the details of income on the SEES SA tax calculator, including details of all foreign income, following the steps below