I really don't like dividend in Switzerland, because I don't think they are tax efficient.
First of all, I'm not a tax expert and I my only experience in the field is by reading the tax code and compiling my own taxes. So no guarantee.
Second: as already mentioned multiple times in this forum, there is really no difference between capital gain or dividend: either is the company buying stock back, maintinaing the stock value high, or is distributing dividend, with the consequent falling in value of the stock.
But this is an US forum, and since in the US funds MUST distribute dividend (whereas in EU and CH they can keep it and redistribute it), they are always confronted with dividend. We are not, we can decide not to receive them. And this for us is better, tax-wise. Why?
In the rest of Europe, they have taxes on capital gain. That means that in the end, you are taxed if you recive income or you are taxed if you have capital gain and sell your stock. So no big difference.
In Switzerland, we don't have capital gain taxes. The accumulating fund in which we invest MUST still pay dividend taxes, obviously, but if we invest in a low-yield, high growth index, the fund must only pay taxes for 1.8-2% dividend yield they have.
To be more clear, let's look at an example:
Citizen A has 1 million francs in a dividend strategy portfolio with an annual yield of about 4%.
Citizen B has 1 million francs in a broad diversified accumulating index fund with a yield of 2%.
To keep it simple, let's assume both fund had the same final growth of 104%. That means that fund A at the end of the year will be 1'000'000 chf + 40'000 of distributed dividend, while fund B have 1'040'000 in stocks value.
For another simplification, let's say that both dividend, for the investing fund and your own, are taxed at 10%. That means that since fund B must pay tax on 2% yield, the real final value after taxes is 1'020'000 + 90% of 20'000 chf of yield = 1'038'000 chf of stocks value.
Citizen A will receive at first only 26800 chf: withholding tax of 33%! After tax declaration and so on he gets the difference back. A 40'000 chf income taxed @10% is 4000 chf of taxes, so in the end he will have 36'000 chf (40'000 of dividend yield minus 4000 for taxes).
Citizen B instead will sell 38'000 chf of shares, pays a transaction costs of ~40 chf (including swiss federal stamp tax of 0.075%), and will end up with 37960.- chf
He will never be required to declare the capital gain on the selling of stocks as income.
So to resume:
Citizen A: 36000 chf after taxes + 1 million of high-yield fund
Citizen B: 37960 chf after taxes + 1 million of broad based fund
That's almost ~2000 more for Citizen B, also his portfolio had an yearly performance of 3.8% compared to 3.6% for the high yield one.
Of course there are a lot of assumption in this example; if you own an house, for example, you have to declare as Vermögensertrag both dividend and eigenmietwert, causing your taxable income to skyrocket to 60'000 chf.
So it really depends on many factors: in which tax bracket are you, your personal situation and so on.
But one thing is clear: by selling stocks and never receiving dividend you'll never have the problem and the bureocracy of the withholding tax @33% :D