Does anyone have one? How do they work and what are the benefits? Not exactly a travel question but oh well!

Dear Peep,
Unless you have large amounts of money that you wish to hide, a Swiss bank account is not useful to a US citizen.

1. You have to declare it on your Federal income tax form, which flags you for an audit.

2. The dollar is down compared the the Swiss Franc, so you will lose money even if the interest rate is higher.

3. You will have to pay an exchange fee to have your money convered to dollars.

Peep,
Other than what ira said, just be informed that interest rates are under 1 %. Salary accounts are around 0.5 % only with almost all banks.
They can be slightly higher for large amounts (speaking of CHF 100.000.- and more) and if you don't retreat anything for decades, i.e. sort of savings account for the age.
Forget about it.

I have euros, not dollars, and may move to Switzerland someday (if I'm lucky!). As far as I know, Americans only have to declare that we have money in a foreign account, which I do already, because I live in Germany. Also, I'll have to pay to convert to dollars at some point anyway if all my money is in euros and I move back to the states. The interest rate here is very low as well. I was thinking it would be a secure investment, to hedge against euro-dollar fluctuations in the future. Any other comments?

Peep,
We had to prove that we
- lived in CH and
- worked in CH
before we could even open an account.
The entire process took weeks and was a nightmare. Unless you are Swiss it is a pain.

My parents had a Swiss bank account of $20,000+, and the fees offset any interest earned on the account. If you have large amounts of money it might then be worthwhile.

Some of the responses are not correct at all.

For example, as long as you do not invest the money in US Securities and notify them not to report to the IRS, they will not report income.

http://swiss-bank-accounts.com/e/banking/tax.html


The Swiss do not lift secrecy rules for tax evasion even to foreign governments, only or tax fraud

http://swiss-bank-accounts.com/e/ban...crecy/tax.html

Sorry do not understand Ira's point - will lose against SFR if US dollar then strengthens only after you have transferred into SFR. If you open $ account, then where is the loss or change to SFR and US $ continues to weaken. Secrecy is big plus - but you also get that from Panama, Luxembourg, Latvia and Austria to name 4. Some of these are cheaper than Swiss accounts.