Are stock gains tax-free in Switzerland? When you count as a professional securities dealer

You sold shares at a profit and still paid no income tax. In Switzerland that is the normal case: capital gains on securities held as private assets are in principle tax-free.

The exception is called professional securities dealing. If your trading activity is classified as self-employment, tax-free capital gains become taxable business income. On top of that come AHV contributions, bookkeeping obligations and the question of what happens to your portfolio as business assets.

The key point first: there is no number of trades, no holding period and no amount of profit above which you automatically count as a dealer. Anyone who quotes you such a limit is simplifying. This article explains how the assessment actually works, on which three levels it takes place and what is published in your canton of residence.

Quick answer: the three levels

The line between private wealth management and professional securities dealing is drawn on three levels:

1. Preliminary review under FTA Circular No. 36. Five criteria that must be met cumulatively. If they are met, the tax authorities assume private wealth management in every case.
2. Overall assessment under the case law of the Federal Supreme Court. If one criterion is not met, the individual case is assessed on the overall picture. Transaction volume and debt financing carry the most weight. In addition, the activity must be objectively capable of generating a profit.
3. Cantonal administrative practice. The substantive definition is harmonised under federal law. The published preliminary-review practice of the cantons does differ, in some cases considerably.

One unmet criterion does not make you a professional dealer. It opens the individual assessment.

The legal basis in one paragraph

Art. 16 para. 3 of the Federal Act on Direct Federal Taxation (DBG) declares capital gains from the sale of private assets to be tax-free. Art. 18 para. 1 and 2 DBG, by contrast, capture all income from self-employment, including capital gains on business assets. The same applies to the cantons through Art. 7 para. 4 lit. b and Art. 8 of the Tax Harmonisation Act (StHG). There is no statutory definition of professional securities dealing. The term comes from the case law of the Federal Supreme Court, which since BGE 122 II 446 has transferred the criteria used for real estate dealing to securities.

The Federal Supreme Court has also held that the concept of self-employment must be interpreted the same way for cantonal and municipal taxes as for direct federal tax (vertical tax harmonisation, BGer 2C_766/2010). A canton therefore cannot create its own, diverging definition. It can only shape its assessment practice differently. That is exactly what the section on the cantons below is about.

Level 1: the five criteria of FTA Circular No. 36

Circular No. 36 of the Federal Tax Administration dated 27 July 2012 contains a preliminary review. The tax authorities assume private wealth management in every case if the following five criteria are met cumulatively:

Three details that are missing from most summaries:

The denominator for transaction volume also covers credit balances. What counts is the holdings of securities and credit balances at the start of the year, not just the portfolio value. Anyone who uses only the portfolio systematically calculates too unfavourably.

The 50 percent is a guide value, not the criterion. The criterion is that the capital gains are not needed to cover the cost of living. At 55 percent the criterion is not automatically breached, it simply needs to be explained.

The holding period presupposes an allocation. For partial sales out of several purchase tranches the circular does not define a method. Whether you calculate on FIFO, LIFO or specific identification can tip the result.

What happens if one criterion is not met

Suppose you sell several shares after three months. That means the first criterion is not met. It does not mean you are a professional dealer. It means the preliminary review is no longer sufficient and your situation is assessed on the overall picture.

The circular is an administrative ordinance. It binds the tax administrations, not the courts. The Federal Supreme Court has said so expressly (BGer 2C_375/2015, para. 3.2). The five criteria are therefore a safe harbour for clear cases, not a definition of the dealer.

Just as important: the preliminary review works in one direction only. It rules out professional status, it never establishes it. Anyone who breaches the criteria in order to deduct losses has gained nothing by doing so. More on that under the heading of profit-making ability.

Under the circular, the tax administrations issue binding advance rulings only in clear-cut cases. In borderline cases a binding advance assessment is often only possible to a limited extent, because professional status depends on the transactions actually realised and on the circumstances of the particular tax period.

Level 2: how the Federal Supreme Court assesses the overall picture

If the preliminary review is not passed, the authorities examine all the circumstances of the individual case. The indicators do not have to be present cumulatively. Each can suffice on its own or together with others, and the absence of one indicator can be offset by another that is particularly pronounced.

How the weighting shifted in 2009

With BGer 2C_868/2008 of 23 October 2009 the Federal Supreme Court shifted the weighting. A systematic approach and specialist knowledge are normal among private investors today and now carry only subordinate importance, primarily as exclusion criteria: their absence speaks against professional status, their presence alone does not establish it. Since then two objectively measurable figures have been in the foreground:

Primary indicators

• the size of the transaction volume, that is the sum of all purchase prices and sale proceeds
• the use of substantial borrowed funds to finance the transactions
• derived from this: leverage and entrepreneurial risk as well as speculative use of derivatives

Secondary indicators

• frequency of transactions
• short holding period
• systematic or planned approach
• reinvestment of profits into similar investments
• specialist knowledge

Context

• main occupation and time commitment
• professional proximity to the financial sector
• ratio of trading profits to other income
• one-off or recurring activity

Debt financing is judged in relation

A Lombard loan does not make you a dealer. Debt financing is assessed in relation to the scale of the trading. In 2023 the Aargau Special Administrative Court classified a loan of around CHF 32,000 against a transaction volume of over CHF 500,000 as not substantial. What matters is whether the borrowed funds are what make the scale of the trading activity possible in the first place and create a debt risk that goes beyond the loss of your own assets.

Options, margin and leverage

With leveraged instruments the number of transactions is not an adequate yardstick. In BGer 2C_758/2020 of 29 July 2021 the Federal Supreme Court clarified that for such instruments the transaction volume must not be based mechanically on the notional value of the underlying. At the same time, in that case speculative derivatives, borrowed capital and risks comparable to those of a professional trader were strong indicators of professional status.

What is relevant, therefore, is the capital actually deployed, the margin, the economic exposure, the leverage and the purpose of the position. Hedging your own portfolio is something different from a leveraged bet.

Can a single transaction be professional?

Yes, in exceptional cases. Circular No. 36 itself states that with a short holding period even a single transaction can lead to self-employment. In practice this concerns very large, largely debt-financed participation transactions with substantial risk. Conversely, many small trades alone do not make a dealer.

Does your occupation matter?

Less than is often assumed. Anyone working in investment banking or portfolio management brings specialist knowledge that counts as an indicator. On its own that is not enough. For investors in full-time employment, self-employed dealing as a sideline is assumed only in particular constellations, typically where there is substantial debt financing and high entrepreneurial risk.

What applies if an asset manager trades for you?

A discretionary mandate offers no protection. Under settled Federal Supreme Court practice it is not decisive whether you carry out the transactions yourself or through an authorised third party. The manager's conduct is attributed to you. Bringing in a specialist has been regarded as ordinary since BGE 122 II 446 and on its own speaks neither for nor against professional status. The Thurgau tax practice and the Zug tax manual state this principle expressly.

The overlooked criterion: is your activity objectively capable of making a profit?

Self-employment presupposes an intention to make a profit. In securities trading the subjective intention to profit is present in practically every case. The Federal Supreme Court additionally requires, however, that the activity is objectively suited to generating profits on a sustained basis.

This line of case law is older than many articles suggest:

• BGer 2C_375/2015 of 1 December 2015. An employed auditor traded derivatives for three years, at a loss every year. Transaction volume, holding period and borrowed funds pointed to professional dealing. Even so: an activity that yields nothing over the long run is a clear indicator of a missing intention to profit. Subsequent periods may be taken into account in the assessment.
• BGer 2C_389/2018 of 9 May 2019. Losses without exception over at least 13 years. After a certain span of time an intention to profit can no longer be assumed.
• BGer 9C_325/2025 of 19 May 2026. A Geneva couple, forex and options trading. Over 2012 to 2021, profits of around CHF 829,000 stood against losses of over CHF 12 million. The Federal Supreme Court refused to classify this as self-employment and therefore denied the loss deduction. The remaining dealer indicators did not even have to be examined.

An Aargau case from 2023 shows how this works in practice. An employee traded with around 100 transactions per year, a transaction volume of CHF 533,000 against opening holdings of CHF 209, and held the positions for at most five days in 60 percent of cases. Several clear indicators of professional status. The court nevertheless denied it, because the activity produced losses in every year from 2012 to 2017. The losses remained private capital losses and therefore not deductible.

Two consequences follow from this:

First, the tax office may take later years into account. If a period is only assessed years later, for example because of after-tax proceedings, knowledge about the following years feeds into the assessment. The argument that you could not have known at the time that it would go wrong was expressly rejected.

Second, consistency across periods counts. Anyone who claims a professional trading business in a loss year and private wealth management in an economically identical profit year loses credibility. Each tax period is assessed separately, true. But the facts and the argument have to fit together across the years.

Level 3: what the cantons publish

The definition is harmonised. The published preliminary-review and assessment practice is not. A look at your canton of residence is therefore always worthwhile. All information as at September 2026.

Zurich: own directive deliberately repealed

Zurich had its own directive dated 20 July 2005 (ZStB No. 14/000). The Finance Directorate repealed it on 29 October 2012, reasoning that the concept of self-employment is defined the same way for cantonal and municipal taxes as for direct federal tax, leaving no room for a separate interpretation. Since then Circular No. 36 has applied by analogy to cantonal and municipal taxes as well. The Zurich tax manual refers to this expressly in the context of cryptocurrencies (ZStB 16.5).

So Zurich does not have no rule, it abolished its rule. For a submission to the Zurich tax office that is the clearest starting position of all seven cantons. At the same time an appeal court case shows the limit: around 160 transactions and a volume of 2.5 times the opening holdings do not rule out private wealth management, yet were still classified as professional because of the overall structuring of the income sources. Staying below the volume threshold does not automatically make you safe.

More on tax advice in Zurich.

Zug: published exclusion criteria

The Zug tax manual sets out its own exclusion criteria. Professional status is generally to be ruled out if

• average securities holdings excluding liquid funds are below CHF 200,000,
• there are fewer than 100 purchases and sales per year, or up to 200 where neither borrowed capital nor derivatives beyond hedging are used,
• turnover is below one times the average securities holdings, or up to twice without borrowed capital and derivatives,
• the holding period for the majority of security categories is longer than six months.

Two points you need to know: for spouses who do not each manage their own assets, and for simple partnerships, the thresholds are added together. And the Zug tax manual places the hobby-activity threshold at 5 to 10 years without meaningful profit, which anchors the profit-ability test described above directly at cantonal level.

These figures are not Switzerland-wide dealer thresholds. Similar values are found in other cantons, in some cases formulated as alternative rather than cumulative conditions. Cantonal thresholds cannot be transferred to another canton.

More on tax advice in Zug.

Thurgau: read the published practice carefully

The Thurgau tax practice (StP 20 No. 2, version 2026-09) refers in section 1 to Circular No. 36. In section 2.2, however, it requires six cumulative criteria to exclude professional status, among them a holding period of at least one year and the absence of professional proximity. That corresponds to the catalogue of criteria used by the Swiss Tax Conference before 2012. Today's Circular 36 works with six months and no longer knows professional proximity as a preliminary-review criterion.

For a Thurgau case this means: the deviation is not to be treated as a deliberately stricter substantive rule, but to be reconciled with harmonised federal law. For direct federal tax, Circular 36 applies in any event. Incidentally, the same directive confirms that the indicators of professional status do not have to be present cumulatively and that handling through a third party is not decisive.

More on tax advice in Thurgau.

St. Gallen, Aargau and Geneva: Circular 36 by analogy

All three cantons refer in their published practice to Circular No. 36, in each case in connection with cryptocurrencies and expressly by analogy for professional dealing as well.

St. Gallen exempts capital gains on movable private assets under Art. 37 para. 1 lit. b of its cantonal tax act and states that mining can be self-employed or employed sideline income depending on the circumstances. Aargau refers to § 33 para. 1 lit. i of its cantonal tax act and, in the 2023 decision described above, applied profit-making ability as the decisive criterion. Geneva refers to circulaire no 36 par analogie, and in 2026 the Federal Supreme Court confirmed that Art. 19 LIPP is to be interpreted in the same way as the federal rule.

More on tax advice in St. Gallen, in Aargau and in Geneva.

Schwyz: Federal Supreme Court practice instead of a tax manual

For Schwyz we found no published administrative practice with its own thresholds. What governs is Federal Supreme Court practice, and the most important derivatives decision of recent years comes from Schwyz: BGer 2C_758/2020. There the tax administration had left a small profit untaxed as a private capital gain for an earlier period and then refused to allow a loss of over CHF 2.2 million in the following year. The Federal Supreme Court referred the matter back for reassessment. The case shows how strongly periodicity shapes the assessment.

More on tax advice in Schwyz.

Where stock gains are taxable even without dealer status

The statement "stock gains are tax-free" applies only to capital gains in the narrow sense. The law recognises constellations in which the sale of participations is taxed regardless of any professional status:

For entrepreneurs and executives with employee shares this is often more relevant than the dealer question. Checking whether a gain is tax-free therefore starts with the type of instrument, not with the number of trades. For how that plays out in practice, see the article on how RSUs are taxed in Switzerland.

Two directions, the same criteria

The distinction can run in two directions.

Defensive: the tax office wants to tax your gains and classify you as a professional dealer. It bears the burden of proof for the facts that establish the tax.

Offensive: you want to deduct substantial losses as losses from self-employment. Then you bear the burden of proof, and profit-making ability becomes the central hurdle.

With private wealth management, gains are tax-free but losses are not deductible. With self-employment, losses are commercially justified expenses (Art. 27 para. 2 lit. b DBG) and can be carried forward for seven years under Art. 31 para. 1 DBG. The legal criteria are the same in both directions. The evidence and the economic interest are not.

The consequences go beyond income tax

AHV, IV and EO

Income from self-employment is subject to contributions under Art. 9 AHVG. Under Art. 23 para. 4 AHVV the income and equity figures reported by the tax authorities are binding on the compensation office. Whether self-employment exists at all is assessed independently by the compensation office, but in practice it follows the tax classification unless that is clearly doubtful. The contribution rate for the self-employed is up to 10 percent of income. Conversely, self-employed earned income can open up the higher pillar 3a limit, but only if there is no occupational pension scheme. Anyone who remains employed alongside and stays affiliated to a pension fund does not benefit from this.

Business assets

Assets that serve the self-employed activity wholly or predominantly become business assets. Not automatically your entire wealth, but in practice usually the whole trading portfolio, because individual positions within one portfolio can hardly be separated. This becomes relevant on transfer into private assets, which under Art. 18 para. 2 DBG is treated as a disposal, and on cessation of the activity, for which Art. 37b DBG provides privileged liquidation taxation.

Anyone who trades actively and also invests for the long term should keep the two in separate portfolios. That is no guarantee of how they will be allocated, since the actual function remains decisive. But it makes the distinction provable.

Bookkeeping and retention

Self-employed persons must attach annual accounts or statements of assets, liabilities, income and expenses to their tax return (Art. 125 para. 2 DBG) and keep the supporting documents for ten years (Art. 126 para. 3 DBG). For traders that means: complete broker statements, transaction lists with acquisition costs, margin and credit documentation, derivatives reports and documentation of hedging positions.

Your own conduct becomes an indicator here. In the Aargau case it was held against the taxpayer that he had initially not declared the loss, kept no accounts and not disclosed the loan. Anyone who wants to be treated as self-employed must have behaved that way from the outset.

VAT

Turnover in the area of money and capital transactions is exempt from tax under Art. 21 para. 2 no. 19 of the VAT Act. Securities trading itself therefore generally does not give rise to VAT liability. Where taxable activities are carried out alongside, the consequences for input tax deduction must be examined separately.

What applies to expats?

For people moving to Switzerland, levels come into play that do not matter in a purely domestic case.

Lump-sum taxation. Taxation according to expenditure requires under Art. 14 para. 1 lit. c DBG that you carry out no gainful activity in Switzerland. If professional trading activity is carried out from Switzerland, that requirement can fall away and put expenditure-based taxation as a whole at risk, not just the tax exemption of the gains. Where you trade actively yourself from a Swiss residence, much speaks for the gainful activity being carried out in Switzerland. With cross-border structures or delegated asset management this must be examined case by case. For those taxed on expenditure the dealer question is therefore existential.

Tax at source. Anyone resident in Switzerland and taxed at source is subject to a mandatory subsequent ordinary assessment under Art. 89 para. 1 lit. b DBG as soon as there is income not subject to withholding tax. Income from self-employment falls under this. Withholding tax on salary continues to be deducted and is credited in the ordinary assessment. What is new is that you have to file a complete tax return and your entire income and wealth is assessed on an ordinary basis.

Arrival and departure. The assessment is made per tax period. Where tax liability covers only part of the year, the key figures of the circular, in particular the opening holdings, become imprecise. Positions built up before arrival and sold after arrival need a clean acquisition cost basis.

Foreign brokers and double taxation agreements. The location of the broker says nothing about which state may tax income from self-employment. For cross-border activity the specific double taxation agreement must be examined, since the agreements treat self-employed income differently.

Social security. For cross-border activities the applicable system must be examined separately. Within the EU, EFTA and Switzerland the conflict rules of Regulation 883/2004 apply. Where there is employed activity in one state and self-employed activity in another at the same time, under Art. 13 para. 3 of the regulation the employed activity is generally decisive for which system applies.

What applies to cryptocurrencies?

Capital gains on cryptocurrencies held as private assets are likewise tax-free. Zurich, Zug, St. Gallen, Aargau, Geneva and Thurgau apply the criteria of Circular No. 36 by analogy to active crypto trading. Crypto is nonetheless not a genuine security for tax purposes, hence only by analogy.

Ongoing crypto income has to be assessed separately. Compensation from staking pools generally qualifies at federal level as income from movable assets and is taxable regardless of price performance. Anyone acting as a validator themselves, by contrast, may be carrying out self-employed activity. Lending is to be assessed according to its specific structure. Mining compensation is also taxable income. Whether this constitutes self-employment is determined, under the FTA working paper, by the general criteria. The cantons go to different lengths here: Thurgau classifies mining in its published practice as income from self-employment in every case. St. Gallen makes the allocation to self-employed or employed income depend on the specific circumstances.

Procedure: can an old period be changed at all?

Before you argue about the classification, it has to be clear whether the tax period concerned is still open.

Open assessment. Declaration and submission as usual.

Objection period. An objection to an assessment can be lodged within 30 days (Art. 132 DBG).

Final assessment, everything declared. After-tax proceedings require under Art. 151 para. 1 DBG facts or evidence that were not known to the authority. A mere later change in the legal assessment does not in principle open after-tax proceedings if all the facts relevant to the assessment were fully known to the authority and no new fact and no new evidence is added. What counts is the state of the file at the time, not the theoretical possibility that the authority could have found something out. Anyone who declared transactions, income and holdings in full is therefore largely protected in the defensive case. But the same principle also protects the tax office: a different legal assessment is not a ground for review under Art. 147 DBG. On the basis of a new legal assessment alone, old loss years can generally no longer be redeclared as self-employment once the assessment has become final.

Final assessment, facts not declared. Then after-tax proceedings are on the table, possibly with a fine. The time limit is ten years after the end of the tax period (Art. 152 para. 1 DBG). A penalty-free voluntary disclosure is possible once in a lifetime under the conditions of Art. 175 para. 3 DBG. It saves you the fine, not the back tax plus default interest.

Limitation. The assessment becomes time-barred relatively after five years and absolutely after 15 years (Art. 120 DBG).

FIN check: when to review your situation

A structured review is worthwhile if one or more of these points apply:

• You trade frequently or have a portfolio turnover of more than five times your holdings of securities and credit balances at the start of the tax period.
• You regularly sell positions within six months.
• You use margin, Lombard loans or other debt financing for your trading.
• You trade options, futures, CFDs or other derivatives beyond hedging.
• A significant part of your income comes from trading.
• You want to claim substantial losses for tax purposes.
• You are taxed on expenditure or at source.
• The tax office has asked questions about individual transactions.

An enquiry from the tax office should never be answered in isolation on a single transaction. The sensible approach is to evaluate the entire tax period first: volume, holding period, financing, derivatives, result and the development over several years. Only from that does an overall picture emerge that holds up before the tax office and in court.

Conclusion

Capital gains on movable private assets are tax-free. If your trading activity is classified as self-employment, they become taxable business income with consequences for AHV, bookkeeping obligations and business assets.

There is no magic threshold. The five criteria of Circular No. 36 are a preliminary review for clear cases. If they are not met, the overall picture decides, with transaction volume and debt financing in the foreground and objective profit-making ability as a requirement that can override even the strongest dealer indicators. And alongside federal law it is always worth looking at the published practice of your canton of residence, from Zurich's deliberate repeal of its directive to the Zug guide values.

FIN analyses securities and trading cases independently and across all levels: tax classification, cantonal practice, procedural status and the consequences for AHV, business assets, pensions and international matters.

Legal basis and case law

Law and administrative practice

• Art. 14, 16 para. 3, 17b, 18, 20 para. 1 lit. b, 20a, 27, 31, 37b, 89, 120, 125, 126, 132, 147, 151, 152, 175 DBG
• Art. 7, 8 and 12 StHG
• Art. 9 AHVG, Art. 23 para. 4 AHVV
• Art. 13 para. 3 Regulation (EC) No. 883/2004
• Art. 21 para. 2 no. 19 VAT Act (MWSTG)
• FTA Circular No. 36 of 27 July 2012, Professional securities dealing (PDF, German)
• FTA Circular No. 37, Taxation of employee participations
• FTA Circular No. 44, Taxation according to expenditure
• FTA Circular No. 45, Taxation at source of earned income
• FTA working paper on cryptocurrencies and ICOs/ITOs

Federal Supreme Court

• BGE 122 II 446
• BGer 2C_868/2008 of 23 October 2009
• BGer 2C_766/2010 of 29 July 2011
• BGer 2C_375/2015 of 1 December 2015
• BGer 2C_389/2018 of 9 May 2019
• BGer 2C_758/2020 of 29 July 2021
• BGer 9C_325/2025 of 19 May 2026

Cantonal practice, as at September 2026

• Zurich: repeal of directive ZStB No. 14/000 by the Finance Directorate on 29 October 2012, ZStB 16.5 cryptocurrencies
• Zug: tax manual, notes on § 17 StG, section 9.3
• Schwyz: no published practice with its own thresholds found
• Geneva: ge.ch, Gestion de la fortune privée ou commerce de crypto-monnaies, as at 11 November 2025
• St. Gallen: sg.ch, cryptocurrencies, as at 3 March 2026
• Thurgau: tax practice StP 20 No. 2, version 2026-09
• Aargau: ag.ch, cryptocurrencies. Special Administrative Court for Taxes, 3-RV.2021.161 of 20 July 2023

As at September 2026. This article is for general information purposes and does not replace individual tax or legal advice. The tax classification depends on the specific facts, the relevant tax period and current practice of the authorities and the courts.