Swiss bank account

135man

Hello I have been reading lately about Swiss bank accounts and I was wondering is it illegal to open one or will the revenue screw you if they find out thanks.

srsly78

Nothing wrong with having offshore bank accounts. Not declaring income however is illegal, which includes foreign interest and savings.

tonyka

Best of luck getting your money out of an irish bank.. once they have it they think they own it..lol....

Jim2007

135man wrote: »

Hello I have been reading lately about Swiss bank accounts and I was wondering is it illegal to open one or will the revenue screw you if they find out thanks.

No it is not illegal to hold a Swiss bank account, but unless you have a Swiss residents permit or are in the market for privat banking it is unlikely that any reputable Swiss bank will be willing to talk to you.

You should also be aware that our bank guarantee scheme is not funded by the government and is capped, so if it all goes pear shaped you will most likely come out with a lot less than 100K!

We are also not big on financial regulation, so if things go wrong do not expect much sympathy from the Swiss court system. Remember we have civil law not common law.

murphaph

OP...what reason do you have for wishing to open a Swiss account in particular? Are you just looking for an account outside Ireland?

tech

I have an account with Redmayne-Bentley

Arbiter of Good Taste

135man wrote: »

Hello I have been reading lately about Swiss bank accounts and I was wondering is it illegal to open one or will the revenue screw you if they find out thanks.

By "screw" you mean require you to declare your income as legally required?

The Corinthian

135man wrote: »

Hello I have been reading lately about Swiss bank accounts and I was wondering is it illegal to open one or will the revenue screw you if they find out thanks.

Legally it is not illegal to have one if you are an Irish resident, however it is to have one and not declare it to the Revenue.

As for opening one, if you're a US citizen or resident of the EU, US, Canada, Australia or the usual suspects in terms of Western countries with enough political clout to put pressure on the Swiss banks, then your chances of opening one are slim to none. Unless you have well north of 500k, they simply won't want to know you.

If you don't come from one of these countries, then it's still business as usual.

A far cry from before the credit crisis when as a non resident you could open an account in many but the biggest banks (UBS, CS and ZKB looked for minimums) with little more than 20 Euro and a quick photocopy of your passport.

SBarrett

Am I right in thinking that you get little to no interest on Swiss bank accounts anyway?

The Corinthian

Yes, but when you take the low inflation (on the Franc) into account it's not really any worse than you'd get in the EU. Plus bank interest is not where people here make their investment money.

SBarrett

Just checking.

I remember getting calls from clients during the Euro crises who wanted to go to Switzerland and open bank accounts. There were in deposit accounts paying 5% interest and I thought then that they'd move to something that didn't really pay any deposit interest. I never checked it out at the time.

Steven