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Dividends – Develop Passive Income

Baptiste Wicht | Updated: |

(Disclosure: Some of the links below may be affiliate links)

In our Investing series, there is something we did not yet cover in detail: Dividends. Many companies in the stock market are paying dividends to their stockholders. That means if you own a share of Coca-Cola, you will receive some cash four times a year, every quarter.

Receiving dividends is an excellent way of accumulating cash since it does not require you to do anything. It is an entirely passive income. It is probably the only truly passive income there is. You still need to buy the shares, of course. But once it is done, you will get the money.

There are many important things to know about these dividends, and we cover them all in this article. If, like me, you are investing the entire market, you will get some dividends automatically!

Dividends

As mentioned before, some companies pay a dividend to each share holder.

The company is setting how much money they give away per share per year. For instance, one company could give 20 cents per share as a dividend each year. Most companies pay dividends once per quarter. For the previous example, that means you would be receiving 5 cents every quarter.

There is no official schedule for dividends. Each company can do what they want. Most companies pay it every quarter. But some companies are paying it once a year and some others once a month. If you want this information, you must look online or ask the company.

Some companies can start to pay dividends at any moment. They can also stop paying dividends at any moment. The company decides to pay or not a dividend based on what they believe is the best for the company’s future.

For instance, famous Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hataway paid a dividend only once in all their years! On the other hand, some companies have paid dividends for more than 50 years without interruption. In a strong bear market or a general recession, you may find that many companies will cut their dividends.

Generally, the company will publish the dividend paid per share (DPS). However, this number alone is not useful because it depends on the share’s price.

A metric that is useful is the Dividend Yield. This yield can be easily calculated by dividing the dividend per share by the price (DPS / Price). For instance, if a stock is trading at 50, and they paid a dividend of 2 dollars per share, the yield is 4% (2 / 50 = 0.04 = 4%). This yield is the yearly return (in dividends) you get by buying a share of this company.

Important Dividends Dates

There are several important dates for each dividend from a company:

  1. Declaration date: When the company announces its intention to pay a dividend. It is not a very important date for investors. However, if you are a dividend investor, this could be important. You need to keep track of the dividend increase of companies.
  2. Record date: It is the date the company checks the records to gather the list of shareholders. It is the last day you can buy shares and still get dividends. If you sell before this date, you will not get a dividend.
  3. Ex-Dividend Date: This is probably the most important date. Only holders that purchased shares before the ex-dividend date will receive the dividends. After this date, you can sell your stock, and you will still receive the dividend on the payment date.
  4. Payment Date: This is the date at which you will receive your money.

But unless you focus on dividends, you do not really have to learn all these dates.

Dividend Aristocrat

If you are interested in dividends, you will likely hear the term dividend aristocrat.

This term was used first to define the stocks from the S&P 500 index that increased the dividend they pay per share every year for at least 25 years. Now, it is also used for companies outside of the S&P 500 index.

These companies are generally safer bets than others. They steadily increase their dividend each year. Of course, it does not mean that they are without risk. Many companies were removed from the list during the 2008-2009 crisis because they decreased their dividends. And even a company with an excellent history of dividends can stop paying them.

Dividend Investing

Some people are only investing in companies that pay a dividend. This investing strategy is called dividend investing. This investing strategy is a form of value investing where some of the value estimations is based on the dividends paid by the company. Although he does not only invest in dividend-paying stocks, Warren Buffet greatly likes dividends.

He also invested several times in preferred stocks. The stocks sometimes get a higher dividend and the dividends before the other stocks.

The easiest way to invest in dividend-paying stocks is to choose a dividend stocks ETF. There are many of them already. For instance, I used a Swiss dividend-paying fund for my home bias in my portfolio.

However, most dividend investors are investing themselves. That means they have to choose stocks themselves. Most dividend investors have between 20 and 50 stocks in their portfolios. You may think it is as easy as taking the stocks with the highest dividend yield. But that is not the case.

Some stocks have high dividend yields for bad reasons. For instance, they may want to attract investors in bad financial shape. And some companies are paying more dividends than they earn money. And some stocks are selling higher than their valuation. All these reasons make dividend investing something that is not trivial.

You need to collect a lot of information on the dividend-paying company before you buy its stock. For instance, one of the things you want to consider is the Dividend Payout Ratio. It represents how much of the earnings are spent on dividends. But there are many factors to consider.

I am not a pro of dividend investing. Also, I am not doing any dividend investing. There are many personal finance bloggers out there that invest in dividend stocks. If you want more details, you should look at their blogs. Here are a few I am following:

But there are many more out there. It is an investing trend currently. Search dividend blog on Google, and you will find more than you can read.

Problems with dividend investing

As with everything, not everything is perfect about dividend investing.

Usually, when a company pays dividends, its stock price decreases by the same amount as the dividend paid. If you have a stock worth 100$ that just paid you 3$, the stock will go down to 97$. You still own 100$ as before.

You have the advantage of having some cash that you can reinvest. But your total investment remains the same. If the company could grow faster by reinvesting the dividend in itself, you are losing on potential capital gains.

The earnings that are not distributed as dividends are reinvested into the company. It is a form of automatic compounding. What is interesting here is that most companies in the stock market trade at higher than their book value. That means that their shares are more valuable than their assets.

For instance, the stock is traded at three times the book value. It means that one dollar reinvested in the company has more potential than one dollar of the distributed dividend. It is one of the reasons that Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hataway has not paid any dividend in the last fifty years.

Currently, there are a lot of dividend investors. It is a real trend. The issue with that is that it puts a lot of pressure on the price of the dividend stocks. The price per earnings (P/E) of the most popular dividend stocks has skyrocketed.

These stocks are now more expensive than the average in the stock market. And the only reason for that is that they pay dividends. Several early dividend investors have mostly stopped investing and are now holding cash for the next opportunities. Some of them started investing in other things, such as Real Estate instead.

That is not to say that dividend investing is a bad thing. But before you invest in dividend stocks, you need to be aware of the method’s limitations.

For more information, you should read about the biggest issues with dividend investing.

Dividends and Financial Independence

When planning to be financially independent through your portfolio, dividends will be great.

You will receive directly some cash every few months. You can use this cash to cover your expenses instead of selling shares. This extra cash is an excellent thing since selling shares is not free while receiving dividends is free (of fees, not taxes).

There is a specific advantage to dividends in retirement in Switzerland. If your capital gains make up more than half of your income, you will be considered a professional investor. Once it becomes the case, your capital gains will become taxed. This law means you should get half of your income to be dividends to avoid many taxes!

Dividends in Switzerland

Dividend investing is not very popular in Switzerland. And there is a good reason for that. Dividends are not tax-efficient in Switzerland.

Indeed, dividends are taxed as income, while long-term capital gains are not taxed. That means that it is more efficient to rely on capital gains. This tax inefficiency is contrary to many other countries. Indeed, in most countries, capital gains are more taxed than dividends.

When you receive a dividend in Switzerland, your broker will withhold 35% for the tax office. If you declare them as income in your tax declaration, they will refund it. But this will increase your income. And increasing your income will increase your taxes. Therefore, your dividends will be taxed at your current marginal tax rate. It is why many people in Switzerland do not like to invest in dividend stocks.

But as mentioned in the previous section, they are quite crucial for financial independence!

How to avoid dividends

For tax reasons, some people may want to avoid dividends altogether. Avoiding them is not as straightforward as it seems.

The first idea should be to use accumulating funds instead of distributing them. These funds reinvest the dividends instead of distributing them to shareholders. But in Switzerland, this is still counted as dividends. So accumulating funds are as tax-inefficient as distributing funds. Therefore, the only way to reduce taxes is to actually reduce the total amount of dividends you receive.

With broad index funds, you will always receive dividends. If you are willing to avoid them, you must rely on single stocks. Some companies, like Google, do not distribute dividends. So, you could create a portfolio of these companies. But there are not that many of them. So, you will not be very diversified. And it will be very difficult to replicate the performance of this pseudo-index.

One better way would be to invest in Berkshire Hataway, which represents the investments of Warren Buffett. And Berkshire Hataway does not pay dividends. So, you will have a pseudo-fund without dividends. But I still think this is inferior to investing in the broad market.

Avoiding dividends while passively investing is almost impossible. The thing you should do is avoid indexes that focus on dividend-paying companies.

Conclusion

Dividends are regular payments that companies make to shareholders. The companies distribute some of their earnings directly to the shareholders instead of reinvesting them. Dividend investing is a very popular investing strategy. Unfortunately, this popularity made dividend-paying stocks more expensive than regular stocks.

I like receiving a dividend. It is some extra money as passive income. It feels good to receive this money. However, I am not investing mostly in dividend companies. For now, I am primarily investing in the entire market for good diversification. Even with this, I have a dividend yield of about 1.7%. It is not high yield. But it is still a good passive income.

In Switzerland, it makes more sense to invest in capital gains rather than dividends. Indeed, capital gains are tax-free, while dividends are taxed as income. Therefore, I would not recommend focusing on them in Switzerland.

What do you think about dividend investing?

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Baptiste Wicht started thepoorswiss.com in 2017. He realized that he was falling into the trap of lifestyle inflation. He decided to cut his expenses and increase his income. This blog is relating his story and findings. In 2019, he is saving more than 50% of his income. He made it a goal to reach Financial Independence. You can send Mr. The Poor Swiss a message here.

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27 thoughts on “Dividends – Develop Passive Income”

  1. Hi,

    I’ve received the provisional eTax of 2021 just now, two years later after sending it.

    I see that the Tax Office has removed the discount of witholding taxes on dividends received from stocks of other countries, so I must pay again those taxes.

    I’m a bit confused and I don’t know very well how it works. Will the witholding taxes be refunded later by the Tax Office? Or shall I request the refund in the country of origin? Can I complain about that in the next 30 days?

    Thank you very much.

    1. Hi Notorius,

      By removing, you mean they marked as invalid in the tax declaration?

      In many cantons, there is a minimum (100 CHF in general) for this claim. Below that, they will ignore it.
      But they should provide an explanation as to why they did that. And if you do not agree with the explanation, you can indeed complain. You should at least contact them by email or phone to get more information.

      You cannot request the refund in another country and I doubt it will be refunded later.

  2. Hi,
    I have just come across your blog and I am loving it. Well done! I take also the opportunity to wish a you a happy Xmas.
    While I was reading this article about dividends tax treatment in Switzerland, it came to my mind about the change in regulation coming to effect on 1st January 2020. Dividends which may be distributed up to 100% free of Swiss dividend withholding tax/income tax if the dividend comes from capital contribution reserves.
    Do you know which company in CH or overseas could benefit Swiss investors from paying withholding tax/income tax on dividends?

    1. Merry Christmas Poor Ticinese!

      If I read the new regulations correctly, it was possible before to distribute them 100% free of tax if it came from the capital contribution reserves. Now, they can only come at 50% from this source, so, we won’t have 100% tax-free dividends in the future. And this only applies to companies listed in the Swiss Stock Exchange.
      I do not think it’s a big deal honestly. There are some companies that do these distributions indeed, but most companies do normal distributions in the majority. So, I do not think it will change much. It may make dividend investing in Switzerland a little worse, but probably not much.

      What do you think?

      1. Hello,
        I found this article which is interesting.
        https://www.caplaw.ch/2019/corporate-tax-reform-capital-contribution-principle-for-swiss-listed-companies/

        The key paras. states:
        “As of 1 January 2011, dividends could be paid out of capital contribution reserves without being subject to 35% withholding tax and therefore, be income tax-free for Swiss tax resident individual shareholders.”

        “The proposed new rules regarding the distribution restriction of capital contribution reserves would only affect Swiss-listed companies, i.e. Swiss tax resident companies which are not Swiss-listed or listed on a foreign stock exchange could still pay dividends out of capital contribution reserves without any deduction of withholding tax (e.g., Glencore Plc). The proposed distribution restriction would be limited only to Swiss-listed companies given from a fiscal revenue perspective there would have been no substantial advantage to include foreign-listed Swiss tax resident companies.”

        Hence , if you want to be exposed to mining stock by directly investing into it, Glencore is an option from tax perspective.

        It would be interesting to know if there are other similar companies distributing dividends out of capital contributions reserves benefiting the same income tax treatment.

      2. Hi,

        Indeed, this article is pretty good and explains it well.

        I guess for single-stocks investors, this kind of regulation is important. But for passive investors, it should not make any difference.
        I am pretty sure there are several companies that could profit from this. But I am not sure this is a significant factor in choosing stocks.

        Thanks for stopping by!

    2. Hi!
      I was researching this topic today following the announcement by SIG (Combibloc) of a dividend distribution out of capital reserves.
      I wonder how frequent this is.

      UBS is a notable payer of dividends that come from those reserves and are tax free (50% since the recent reform, 100% in the years before).
      I hope to find more!
      Holcim, Zurich Flughafen have made similar announcements recently.

      PS: this website (and its comment section) is a gem for any Swiss domiciled saver/investor!

      1. HI LCD,

        It’s not that frequent I think. But it’s a good point indeed. These are differently taxed in Switzerland. I would not optimize for them, but they are definitely interesting.
        I should write more about that, excellent point!

  3. Hi, thanks for the article.
    One thing I’d like to ask.
    You said: “The first idea should be to use accumulating funds instead of distributing. These funds reinvest the dividends instead of distributing them to shareholders. But in Switzerland, this is still counted as dividends.”

    Does it mean that if I buy an European ETF like e.g. “iShares MSCI Russia ADR/GDR UCITS ETF (Acc)” (ISIN: IE00B5V87390) then I still need to pay tax in Switzerland as if it paid out a dividend ?

      1. OK, so from a perspective of Swiss-based investor it doesn’t make any difference whether I buy a dividend-paying ETF or its accumulating counterpart. It’ll increase my annual income in the same manner and therefore both are tax-inefficient in the same way.
        Thanks a lot ! You saved me a lot of problems :D.
        Btw. is there a “Donate” button anywhere in this website ?

  4. Hi,
    this blog is very interesting for me as someone starting to learn about this world of investing. Thankyou.
    In the chapter How to avoid dividends, second paragraph, what is the conclusion of the last sentence : Therefore, we need… The idea I got is that distributing are better?

    Another question is about the Berkshire company. They don’t pay dividends but they own companies that pay dividends, just like a fund or an accumulating ETF. That doesn’t count as income for swiss taxes?

    1. Hi Pato,

      1) For me distributing are better because I have more freedom with the income I get from them. But from a tax point of view, they are the same. The cut phrase was meant to say that the only way to reduce taxes on dividends is to reduce the actual amount of dividends we receive.
      2) No, it does not. In this case, Berkshire Hataway receives the dividends, not you. However, keep in mind that this would be less diversified than an actual fund or ETF. This is a bit of an extreme example to avoid dividends ;)

      Thanks for pointing out the weird phrase, it should be fixed now.

      Thanks for stopping by!

  5. Is there a way to find dividend dates for stocks like a spreadsheet. At the moment, I go and check individual stocks in SMI for the dividend date which is time consuming. Thanks

  6. A very nice summary, with lots of information we wish we had known earlier before we made any of our blunders. A nice example would be putting in an order on the ex-dividend date and then not knowing why the next day the share price had dropped by more than 3%.
    The one topic we still struggle with is tax, especially international tax treat as we are an expat family. We’re not sure which value would make it worthwhile to hire a tax advisor. Did consider hiring any tax advisors yourself?

    1. Hello Mrs. Blunders,

      Thank you very much! Yes, there are a lot of things can be quite confusing. I was also very surprised that one of my stock dropped a lot just after it paid dividends. Stock investing is not that intuitive.

      I never thought of hiring a tax advisor, no. I am not an expat and my situation is still quite simple, so I don’t think there would be a lot of value in doing that. But if I was in a foreign country, I would consider it at least for the first year. I know that sometimes it can save quite some money. But if your tax is already well down, a good tax advisor will not help you. I do not think hiring a tax advisor every year is worth it.

      I am also guessing that this may depend on which country you are filling your taxes with. Switzerland is a bit complicated at first, but not that bad.

      Thanks for stopping by and good luck reducing your blunders :)

  7. I am surprised you did not mention that for CH residents dividend investment is highly tax inefficient!!!

    Furthermore there is much better use of money for a company than to pay out dividends. Since the price of a stocks is 3 times book value on average, you would benefit 3x times more if the company would just withheld the earnings instead of paying a dividend. Provided the company makes good use of that money.

    A good article on this topic: https://www.fundsmith.co.uk/news/article/2017/04/20/the-unique-advantage-of-equity-investment

    1. The reason why I didn’t include this information is quite simple: I forgot :( I meant to talk about it and completely forgot while I was writing the article. It’s on my TODO list now to add the information.

      I will also had a section on disadvantages. I also have to mention that after dividends, the price of the share fall. And while dividends can be reinvested, earnings are also reinvested into the company. You make a very good point. I should have mentioned all that.

      Thanks for the information and the interesting article!

      1. Hi.

        Good addition to an already good post.

        Just a small note: you’ve got an unfinished sentence “Several early dividend investors has….”

        Best,

    2. Is it really tax inefficient? I’m asking a genuine question as I’m just few months into “studying”.

      Although that was my original understanding too, it seems that in CH usually you are taxed the same for Acc or Dis ETF funds. Even if it is internally reinvested (in Acc case), it still counts as Income. This actually gets worse with Acc if tax authorities do know have the fund registered (check on ictax), in which they cannot figure out how much was the dividend component that was accumulated and will tax the whole thing.

      The second point to take into account will then be the ETF domicile. Basically:
      – if your fund holds mostly US domiciled underlying, go for and US domiciled fund
      – if your fund holds mostly non-US-domiciled underlying, consider the IE domiciled fund

      This is my super short summary of a very long and very informative thread here https://forum.mustachianpost.com/t/tax-optimisation-for-etf-investing/

      Last but most important: thanks a lot for the investing series and the sharing in general, I really enjoy reading your blog.

      1. Hi,

        There is no bad question! I’m really glad you ask!

        You are entirely right about distributing and accumulating funds! Accumulating are not more tax efficient than distributing funds, in Switzerland. It’s generally better with distributing funds that are easier to declare.

        And you are also absolutely right about the domicile of the fund being very important! I need to write more about that!

        My point and zoli’s point, about dividends being inefficient is about the chase for dividends. Between two funds, you should choose the distributing fund. But you should not chase dividends and go for funds that invest in high-dividends shares since this will simply increase your taxes.

        Does that make sense?

        I’m glad you enjoy my blog! I’m enjoying your comments! Feel free to contact me about what I should write about!

        Thanks for stopping by :)

  8. Hi
    I enjoyed reading your investing series.
    Dividend growth investing has been my favorite approach to build a passive income machine so far. I enjoy investing in individual stocks but also like index funds resp ETFs. I don‘t see any of them superior, as far as one is consistently investing in high quality assets it will turn out pefectly fine over the long run. The worst thing one can do is Not Investing at all or putting all eggs in one basket.
    Investing in a rental property is something I definitively on my „to do list“ but so far there was no attractive opportunity I‘ve seen.
    Cheers

    1. Hi Financial Shaper,

      I’m glad you liked my investing series.

      I agree with you that the worst is not to invest ;) (Even though I would have more money had I not invested anything).
      There is nothing wrong with picking individual stocks, but you need to do your research. For instance, picking only the stocks with the highest dividend yield is pretty dumb. There are so many things to take into account. That’s why for a lot of people, it’s better to rely on index funds. But it’s good that you are enjoying investing in individual stocks!

      Good luck with your investing and good dividends!

      Thanks for stopping by :)

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