A portfolio tracker for Czech investors

The koruna is why the usual numbers mislead

The koruna cuts both ways, and the painful direction is the less obvious one: in a year when the crown strengthens against the dollar, a genuinely good year for a US-heavy portfolio can look flat or negative when measured in CZK. The reverse happens too — crown weakness dressing up a mediocre year. Neither movement says anything about how much you saved or how the funds performed, and a single "total return" percentage folds all three together.

BorderFolio keeps them apart by construction. A portfolio has one base currency — koruna, euro or dollar, your choice — and every transaction is converted at the rate on the day it happened, never at today's rate. A 25,000 Kč contribution made in 2022 stays a 25,000 Kč contribution forever; the currency move since then shows up as market movement, where it belongs, instead of quietly distorting the record of what you put in. The method, and its limits.

The time test runs on dates you probably didn't keep

Czech tax law exempts gains on securities held past a holding-period test — the well-known three-year časový test, with conditions and an annual cap that have changed in recent years and should be confirmed before you rely on them. What matters for tracking is not the rate, which this page deliberately does not state, but the mechanics: the test runs per purchase, not per position.

A position built by monthly buying over five years is not one holding with one date. It is sixty lots, each with its own clock, some past the test and some not — and the broker's current-holdings screen shows you none of that. A tracker that stores every purchase with its own date and its own exchange rate preserves exactly the record the question is answered from, whether you answer it yourself or hand it to an adviser.

Withholding, and the paperwork it depends on

The Czech Republic has an income tax treaty with the United States, so a Czech resident holding US-domiciled funds or US stocks is subject to 15% US withholding on portfolio dividends rather than the statutory 30% — provided a valid W-8BEN is on file with the broker. The form expires; when it does, the 30% applies regardless of what the treaty says, and the difference appears quietly on the dividend line of a statement nobody reads closely.

That is only step one. Step two is Czech tax on the foreign dividend, with its own crediting rules — and not a number this page will state, because it depends on your full position. What the product does is model both steps from the residence and rates you configure, per instrument, against dividends your portfolio actually paid. The Czech withholding page covers step one in full.

Why Czech investors buy Irish funds — and what that does and doesn't change

Most Czech index investors end up in Irish-domiciled accumulating UCITS — VWCE and CSPX territory — and on withholding alone that choice is a wash: a Czech resident loses 15% at source on a US-domiciled fund, and an Irish UCITS suffers the same 15% inside the fund on its US holdings. Same number, different place, and the statement never shows the second version at all.

The real arguments are structural. An accumulating share class produces no distribution to declare each year — administratively significant when foreign dividends are otherwise a tax-return line. And Irish funds are not US-situs assets for US estate tax, which matters because there is no US–Czech estate tax treaty: US-situs holdings above $60,000 can expose an estate to US estate tax on the excess. That threshold is crossed by an ordinary index investor in an ordinary month, with no warning on any dashboard. What domicile changes.

Whatever your broker is

Upload the statement it already produces — an XTB or Degiro export, an Interactive Brokers activity statement, a Fio confirmation, a Portu overview, a CSV, or a screenshot of a mobile app. Positions, purchases, dividends and stated commissions are extracted and shown for review before anything is added. There is no broker connection and no credentials involved at any point, which also means no dependency on whether your platform offers an API. How import works.

A multi-month export is worth more than a current-holdings screenshot: it rebuilds the contribution history behind the position — which for a Czech investor is also the lot-by-lot date record everything above runs on. PSE-listed holdings and foreign ETFs can sit in one portfolio, or in separate portfolios with a combined view on Pro.

Limits, plainly

• Not tax advice, and not a filing figure. Every number is an informational estimate on your own holdings, with its assumptions shown. See the disclaimer.
• Step one comes from the IRS treaty table, not from your account; what your broker actually withheld is on your statement and can differ.
• Step two is modelled from the rates you configure, not from Czech legislation encoded in the product.
• The time test is not computed for you. The product preserves the per-lot dates the test runs on; whether a given sale qualifies, under which cap, is a question for you and your adviser.
• Rules change — the exemption's conditions and caps have moved in recent years and may move again.
• Individual bonds and treasuries are not imported yet; funds holding them are.