Save taxes with staggered withdrawals in 2024
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Most cantons use a progressive tax system for taxing retirement withdrawals. These withdrawals are coming from the second and third pillars.
This progressive tax system makes it more interesting to stagger your withdrawal over multiple years to save on taxes. This technique is called staggered withdrawals.
I want to discuss this in detail in this article and how you can use staggered withdrawals to save taxes on your second and third pillars.
Withdrawal taxes
When you withdraw your retirement assets, you must pay a tax on this withdrawal. This applies to assets from the second and third pillars.
These taxes are based on the amount you are withdrawing. As usual in Switzerland, you will pay taxes at three levels:
- The canton
- The municipality
- The country
For this, most cantons use a progressive tax system. Such a system means you pay a lower percentage for smaller amounts than larger ones.
The country (federal taxes) also has a progressive tax system, with the percentage increasing with the amounts. The municipality is a percentage of the cantonal taxes. So, if the cantonal tax is progressive, the municipality tax will also be progressive.
Here is the example of the canton of Fribourg:
- 1% for the first 50’000 CHF
- 2% for the next 50’000 CHF
- 3% for the next 50’000 CHF
- 4% for the next 50’000 CHF
- 5% for any amount higher
With this system, we can run a few examples:
- If you withdraw 40’000 CHF, you will pay 400 CHF.
- If you withdraw 80’000 CHF, you will pay 1100 CHF.
- If you withdraw 120’000 CHF, you will pay 2100 CHF.
- If you withdraw 160’000 CHF, you will pay 3400 CHF.
Here are more examples in a graph:
So, we can see that this is not a linear system. What is very important to realize is that withdrawing multiple times small amounts is cheaper than withdrawing a large amount. If you withdraw 4 times 40’000 CHF, you will pay 1600 CHF in taxes. But if you withdraw 160’000 CHF at once, you will pay 3400 CHF. This is more than double!
Since the amounts are calculated yearly, you will need to stagger your withdrawals over multiple years.
Some cantons are worse, and some cantons are better than Fribourg. Since this can vary for each canton and municipality, I cannot show all results here. However, since the federal tax is progressive, it will always be important to stagger your withdrawals.
Staggered withdrawals
So, now that we know that we need to withdraw over multiple years, how can we achieve it? First, we need to see the rules for withdrawing the second and third pillars.
For the second pillar, if you have a pension fund, you must withdraw it at retirement age. If you have a vested benefits account, you can withdraw it up to 5 years before retirement and up to 5 years after. Up to 2030, you do not need proof of employment to withdraw after retirement. However, since 2030, you will need proof of employment.
We can withdraw our third pillar five years before the official retirement age. And we can postpone the withdrawal up to five years after the official retirement age. However, postponing the third pillar withdrawal requires proof of employment. This means that we will need to postpone retirement as well.
So, in a perfect world, you could spread your withdrawal over 11 years. However, this requires working after the retirement age since you need proof of employment. Therefore, in most cases, we should consider that most people can stagger their withdrawals over 6 years.
Theoretically, you could also use advance withdrawal before buying a house or starting a company. However, this is not applicable in most cases. Regardless, this could be another way of staggerring withdrawals.
So, let’s see how we can increase the number of withdrawals for the second and third pillars.
Get five third pillars
Unfortunately, you cannot do a partial withdrawal of a third pillar. You must withdraw an account all at once. So, you need multiple accounts if you want to stagger your withdrawals.
Fortunately, you can open multiple accounts. You should open five third pillar accounts. You may wonder why five since we can generally spread over 6 years. The reason is that most people also have a pension fund or a vested benefits account to withdraw, taking a year.
If you are married, taxes will be computed together. If you are the same age, you will have to withdraw following the same pattern. But if you have some age difference, this means you will be able to withdraw over more years. So, make sure you take that into account.
A good thing about this system is that you can open multiple accounts with the same provider. A good third pillar provider will allow you to create up to five accounts. If you need a good third pillar, you can look at the best third pillar for Switzerland.
And unfortunately, you cannot split a third pillar account. So, this is something you must plan.
Get two vested benefits accounts
If you are employed until your withdrawal, you must withdraw from your pension fund at once (unless you have two employers and two pension funds, but this is rare).
However, if you are not employed, you could have several vested benefits accounts. For this, when leaving your pension fund, you could ask them to send the money to two different vested benefits foundations. It is important that you need two different foundations. You cannot have multiple accounts with the same foundation.
However, some providers have two foundations. So, you can have two accounts at the same provider if it has two foundations. If you do not know where to start, look at the best vested benefits account.
Once again, you cannot split a vested benefits account, so you must plan.
How much can you save?
While you could, in theory, split your withdrawals up to 11 years, most people will only achieve up to 6 years since most people will work until the reference retirement age and will not be able to postpone withdrawals since they will not be employed.
So, in theory, you could split up your withdrawals in equal chunks of 1/6 of the total. However, this ignores that most people will have significantly more in their second pillar than in their third pillar. Since the contribution percentage increases over time, the contributions to the second pillar will quickly outpace the contribution to the third.
On average, we can imagine that most people will have double the money in their second than in their third pillar. This is an average, of course, but it makes sense.
So, if you have 200’000 CHF in your second pillar and 100’000 CHF in your third pillar, you will still have to do a single 200’000 CHF withdrawal and five 20’000 CHF smaller withdrawals. This will still result in very nice tax savings, but significantly less than if you could split the second pillar.
In that case, you would pay 5600 CHF in cantonal taxes instead of 10’000 CHF. This is a very good improvement in favor of staggered withdrawals.
If you split your second pillar withdrawals, you could optimize it further by withdrawing four times 25’000 CHF and twice 100’000 CHF. With that extra step, you would only pay 3’250 CHF in cantonal taxes. In this case, staggering your withdrawals divides your taxes by three.
From that, we can draw a few conclusions:
- Staggering your withdrawals is very effective!
- In practice, most people will only be able to split their withdrawals over six years.
- The strategy becomes more and more effective the more money you have.
- Splitting vested benefits can be very effective if you can achieve that.
Is it legal?
One question you may ask yourselves is whether this is legal. Currently, it is legal, but there are some limitations.
Many people feel this is tax evasion and want to pass new laws to limit it. Already, with the OASI 21 reform, staggered vested benefits are more difficult than before.
Also, some cantons are stricter than others. For instance, the canton of Vaud only allows staggering for 3 years, and the canton of Neuchatel only allows 2. After these points, they will consider this tax evasion.
We will likely see stronger regulations to avoid this in the future. However, we should not stop trying to have 5 third pillars and, ideally, two vested benefits accounts. Since this is currently possible, we should still try to do it. And even if it is not possible in the future, you can always withdraw multiple accounts per year to abide by the law.
The important point is that since you cannot split them later, it is important to be prepared. You never know in which canton you will retire. So it is better to be prepared. Having multiple accounts is never an issue. Staggering over too many years can be an issue in some cantons.
Conclusion
Staggering your retirement withdrawals can save you a significant amount of taxes. However, you must plan for it since you cannot split a third pillar or a vested benefits account. Therefore, you should always consider this when managing your retirement assets.
I recommend anybody open five third pillar accounts and try to balance them over time. You can simply send the money into the account with the lowest amount over time, which will be more or less balanced.
If you have the opportunity, it is also a good idea to split your pension fund into two vested benefits accounts before the official retirement age. But I realize this is an optimization that is only doable for people retiring before the reference retirement age and able to live without these funds for some years.
I plan to reach ten third pillar accounts (5 for me and 5 for my wife) by the age of retirement, more or less balanced. If my plan to retire early works, I will split my pension fund into two vested benefits accounts. Then, we will spread all these accounts for 6 years.
What about you? Are you planning to stagger your withdrawals?
Recommended reading
- More articles about Retire in Switzerland
- More articles about Retirement
- Early retiree in Switzerland – Dror’s Story
- Disaster File – A Simple Way to Prepare for Your Death
- Free by 40 in Switzerland – Book Review
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Hi Baptiste
How does this compute to make 5 3a accounts and 2 vested benefits accounts if you only have five years to withdraw? In the two years you withdraw from your vested benefits, you wouldn‘t also qithdraw from 3a to not increase taxes? So shouldn‘t it be three 3a accounts? Or are you planning to make three big and two small ones so in case you retire early and have the two vested benefits accounts, you can the two small one to two big ones and have three relatively equal 3a accounts to withdraw in the remaining three years? And in case of normal retirement when one year is blocked by withdrawal from your pension fund, you can add the two small ones together for a fourth equally big year of 3a withdrawals?
Also, may I ask:
– how do you pay into your five different accounts: in turns, so one month number 1, one month number 2, … or do you split your input by five every month and pay everywhere exactly the same at the same time? Or would you recommend taking it in turns of years, so 2024 one account, 2025 the second, etc?
– do you have five times the same strategy or do you differentiate a bit to have more risky and less risky accounts?
– what‘s your personal strategy for retirement regarding second pillar: are you just going for a complete cash withdrawal? Because you don‘t HAVE to use up one of the withdrawal years on that, you can just go with a lifelong pension, which is safe and not risky and just withdraw your 3a in cash….
Or are you planning on taking everything out and immediately re-investing it and live off stocks forever?
Hi
You are missing two things:
* You have 6 years to withdraw, not 5.
* Your second pillar (or vested benefits) will generally be much bigger than your 3a. As a result, just the simple fact of splitting your second pillar is a huge benefit even if you have to withdraw it on the same year as one smaller 3a account.
1) It does not really matter. What matters is that at the end, they are mostly balanced. I personally do one per year. I always contribute to the account with the lowest amount. It’s not perfect, but it’s simple.
2) I currently have five times the same strategy, but you could use one of the accounts for some experiments
3) I plan to retire early, so I will have vested benefits accounts and will be forced into cash withdrawal. But I would take a full lump sum anyway because I think I can generate more returns than the second pillar pension.
I think I would still rather withdraw two 3a accounts in the same year as one 3a added to one half of your second pillar which you can expect ti be much bigger.
I couldn’t find anywhere that you have talked about your personal 3a strategy, while openly stating what you have in your private portfolio. Do you not want to or just didn’t think it would help people? If you don’t mind answering, do you just go the highest allowed percentage of stocks and do a similar approach to your Interactive Brokers portfolio?
I noticed that VIAC even lets you choose ETFs like iShares S&P 500, but finpension only has the three banks own offers. Did you personalize your 3a investment strategy?
Yes, you can also combine two 3a into one. Just because you have 7 accounts does not mean you need to withdraw in 7 different years. But having 7 accounts give your flexibility and since you can’t split accounts, it’s much better to have multiple accounts ready at hand even if you withdraw multiple on the same year.
The one strategy I recommend to people wanting to optimize is to get rid of hedging entirely and go 99% world unhedged.
I am currently experiments with 99% quality unhedged, but this is an experiment, I don’t particularly recommend and I have no good rationale for it (nobody’s perfect :) ).
Are you sure VIAC has ETFs? You generally don’t want ETFs in your 3a because retirement index funds are cheaper and more tax efficient.
on this site: https://viac.ch/produkte/saeule-3a/strategien/
waaaay on the bottom there is “Asset List” and under “Equity Developed Markets” position number 3 is a very familiar ETF :-)
Okay, so in 3a you actually WANT to buy the ones whose name you’ve never read before?
Interesting, thanks for the details!
Yes, in your 3a, you want actual retirement funds (UBS, CS and Swisscanto have all good ones). These funds have low TER and can reclaim US dividends withholding.
How do you decide among those? Both VIAC and finpension have so many…. Or do you, personally, just keep the suggested Global 100 solution?
Normally, they make a suggestion based on how they estimate your risk capacity. If you are not risk averse, Global 100 is a good fit for most. If prefer Global over Swiss or Sustainable, but some people will not agree (and it’s fine, this is why there are options).
Hi Baptiste,
Interesting article. Would it be possible to estimate the impact of splitting on portfolio performance? Having different accounts allows you to save on tax, but the overall performance is reduced due to the amount invested.
All the best and please continue doing this great job,
Gio
hi Gio,
I don’t understand why performance would be reduced? Unless you are splitting tiny amounts, you will get exactly the same performance with 5 times X than with a single time 5X.
Hi Baptiste,
My bad, I posted the comment too quickly. You’re right, thanks for correcting me.
One last question: where can I find out the maximum amount of the third pillar that I can open depending on the canton (I live in Ticino)?
Best regards,
Gio
You can always open 5, regardless of the canton. However, in some cantons, you may have to withdraw more than one at once.
I am not aware of any global resource with canton. As far as I know, only Vaud and Neuchatel have limits for that and 5 is fine is all other cantons. But this is only what I have heard.
I am 40 and have a 3a since 11 years at max. deductible yearly deposit… For the optimization you suggest, I should open another 4 3a accounts, reduce the current one to a minimum deposit, to try to balance all the accounts at a similar level by the age of first withdrawal. Is it still worth in my case? I will lose the benefits from the compound interest accumulated in 11 years. Probably need to do a simulation : )
Hi Fab
You don’t lose any benefits of compound interest.
And yes, even at your age, it definitely makes sense to stop investing in the first 3a (the minimum is 0 for a 3a) and then start to fill up 4 new accounts in the next few years.
Hello Mr Baptiste,
I do not quite understand the withdrawals. Is it therefore possible to split the withdrawals of second& third pillar, however we like, but only if the second pillar is moved in a vested account?
Taking the following example:
2a has a total of 300.000 CHF, then it will be moved to a vested account. Can I split the withdrawals over 5 years to avoid paying more taxes? Therefore withdrawing every year 60.000CHF.
3 a has a total of 400.000 CHF. Can I split the withdrawals over 5 years to avoid paying more taxes? Therefore withdrawing every year 80.000CHF ?
Does this make sense?
Many thanks for your clarification
Hi Theodor
Splitting existing vested benefits and 3a accounts is not possible. This is why you need to plan in advantage to have multiple.
You can have up to 2 vested benefits account. When you leave your work, you can split your pension fund into two vested benefits accounts.
You can have up to 5 3a that you must create in advance.
So, you cannot split withdrawals, but only stagger the withdrawals of existing accounts.
Does that make more sense?
Hello Baptiste,
I believe I did not express myself correctly. I ment staggering the withdrawals of existing accounts( either vested or 3a or both), which then would work for the examples given by me?
Thank you very much.
You can’t stagger one account into multiple withdrawals. Each account must be withdrawn in full.
I want to offer an even better option to minimizing tax upon withdrawal: tax-free withdrawal abroad.
For this, you have to become a tax resident in a country that does not tax withdrawals from retirement accounts (e.g. income exclusions for foreign unremitted income in non dom countries).
E.g. Cyprus, Spain under Beckham law, Malta non dom, UK non dom, IR non dom, Portugual under NHR, Georgia, AUS on temporary permit, NZ in first 5 years, etc.
Then Switzerland as the source country must have waived its taxing rights to the residence country according the respective double tax county. This depends on the following factors: retirement account type (piller 2 versus pillar 3a), classification of pension fund (private or public), citizenship (CH versus residence country versus both versus neither). Generally, withdrawing money tax-free is always possible if you are flexible to move. You can find a lot of tax-free withdrawal countries for pillar 3a. For pillar 2, it is more difficult as Switzerland retains taxing rights more often under double tax treaties.
Unfortunately, swiss pension schemes charge fees for account closures or withdrawals abroad. Therefore, I try to have fewer accounts because I assume this is cheaper for my plan to retire taxfree abroad.
Moving abroad also removes Swiss wealth taxes, removes Swiss dividend/interest taxes, retains the favorable 15% residual US withholding tax rate (as most countries have a similar double tax treaty like CH), and substantially lowers cost of living.
Hi Stefan
Thanks for sharing your strategy!
Geoarbitrage can definitely help you reduce your tax burden and optimize your burden. And it’s definitely great to plan that ahead and optimize.
But for most people, moving out of Switzerland is not an option they would consider.
Having more than 5 3rd pillar accounts also make sense if like you did use one for a house purchase along your life.
Good point. In some cases, you can plan ahead and see whether you would need more than 5 portfolios.