I’m not sure if this question is out of scope. However my daughter and son in law are moving from Switzerland to Canada in the new year. They have some questions regarding their investments so I thought I would see if your team can help with answers.
- We have UCITS Irish domiciled ETFs so that we don’t have to pay US withholding tax - are these available in Canada?
- If not, are there any options to invest in for example an S&P 500 ETF (or other US ETFs) without having to pay withholding tax?
- do you have a brokerage account that you recommend? We currently use CornerTrader/CornerBank but they are not present in Canada so we have to switch
This thread may be helpful on the Irish ETF issue. This link provides good basic information. It does not look like Canadians are restricted from owning these, other than the drawbacks mentioned in the second link. However, the tax question here is beyond our expertise. We hadn't even heard of these European products until today. But there are ways to avoid withholding taxes in Canada. Global X offers a number of 'total return' ETFs that use derivatives to avoid distributions. These have been around a while and we are quite comfortable with them. The government reviewed the structures in 2019 and some changes were made so we do not see any future regulatory issues regarding them in the future. HXS, for example, represents the S&P 500 with no distributions and no withholding taxes. Sorry, to maintain independence we do not recommend specific brokers. You may get some better feedback in our forums section from clients on this particular issue. We have heard complaints on nearly every broker, for what that's worth.