BorderFolio/QQQ Irish-domiciled alternatives
Irish-domiciled alternatives to QQQ — UCITS routes to the Nasdaq-100
Last reviewed 3 September 2026
QQQ is the fund most people mean when they say "the Nasdaq-100", and for retail investors in the EEA and the UK it is a fund they cannot buy. The same index is available in Irish-domiciled UCITS wrappers — CNDX and EQQQ are the mainstream ones — and the comparison between the wrappers is less one-sided than the equivalent question for broad-market funds, because the Nasdaq-100 yields so little that withholding tax barely has anything to work on. This page separates what is categorical from what is arithmetic, and shows the arithmetic.
The three funds, side by side
| QQQ | CNDX | EQQQ | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Invesco QQQ Trust | iShares NASDAQ 100 UCITS ETF USD (Acc) | Invesco EQQQ Nasdaq-100 UCITS ETF |
| Domicile | United States | Ireland | Ireland |
| Index | Nasdaq-100 | Nasdaq-100 — identical | Nasdaq-100 — identical |
| Ongoing charge | 0.20% | 0.33% | 0.30% |
| Distribution | Distributing, quarterly | Accumulating | Distributing, with an accumulating share class |
| Listing | Nasdaq, USD | CNDX in USD (London); SXRV in EUR (Xetra). ISIN IE00B53SZB19 | EQQQ, multiple European listings |
| US-situs asset? | Yes | No | No |
Fund data as published by the fund providers in September 2026. Expense ratios, share classes and listings change — the factsheet is the authority, not this page.
Unlike most US-versus-UCITS pairs, there is no index mismatch to argue about: all three track the same hundred-odd companies. QQQ is also structurally unusual — it is a unit investment trust rather than an ordinary open-end fund — but for the questions on this page the differences that matter are domicile, fee and distribution policy. CNDX is the largest of the Irish group by assets; size affects spreads and the risk of a fund ever closing, and the factsheet carries the current figure.
Who actually faces this choice
Two very different readers arrive at this page. Retail investors in the EEA and the UK generally cannot buy QQQ at all: US-domiciled ETFs do not publish the Key Information Document that PRIIPs requires, so the broker blocks the order. For them there is no QQQ-versus-UCITS decision — the real question is CNDX against EQQQ against a synthetic fund, which is a question about accumulating versus distributing, TER, fund size and replication method, and is dealt with below.
For everyone else — investors in the Gulf, Asia, Latin America, Africa and anywhere else an international broker offers both — it is a genuine trade-off: QQQ's lower fee on one side, the Irish wrapper's withholding and estate treatment on the other. And at this particular index's yield, the trade-off does not resolve the way it does for broad-market funds.
Where the dividend is taxed, and how many times
- QQQ is a US fund. Its distribution to you is US-source income, and your residence's rate from the IRS treaty table applies to the entire distribution: 15% for many treaty countries, 10% or 0% for a few, 30% where there is no treaty or no documentation on file.
- CNDX and EQQQ are Irish funds. A physically replicating Irish fund suffers 15% US withholding inside the fund on the US dividends it receives, under the US–Ireland treaty. Ireland then withholds nothing from a non-resident holder — and in CNDX's case nothing is distributed to withhold from in the first place.
So far this is the standard story, and for a fund yielding 2% it usually settles the question. The Nasdaq-100 does not yield 2%.
The honest arithmetic: a 0.6% yield changes the answer
Assume $100,000 invested and a gross yield of roughly 0.6% — about $600 of dividends a year, essentially all of it US-sourced, since the index is a US index.
- Withholding. Inside the Irish wrapper, 15% of $600 is about $90 suffered. Held as QQQ with no treaty, 30% of $600 is about $180 withheld. The largest possible withholding saving from the Irish wrapper is therefore about $90 a year — and at a 15% treaty rate it is roughly zero.
- Fees. The gap runs the other way: 0.30–0.33% against 0.20% is 0.10–0.13% of $100,000, about $100–130 a year in QQQ's favour.
On annual drag alone, QQQ can come out ahead even for a no-treaty resident — the opposite of the broad-market result, and purely because the yield is small. Your residence's treaty rate is a published number; the yield moves year to year, and the factsheet is the authority on both it and the fees.
What the arithmetic does not capture is what is categorical rather than annual. QQQ is a US-situs asset: for a non-US, non-resident estate, US-situs holdings above USD 60,000 can attract US estate tax at rates reaching 40% on the excess, unless an estate tax treaty raises that threshold — and the United States has estate treaties with only a limited number of countries. An Irish-domiciled UCITS is not a US-situs asset for this purpose. A $100,000 position is already past that threshold; no annual saving of $10–40 prices that in.
The synthetic route: gross index return, different structure
Swap-based (synthetic) Nasdaq-100 UCITS ETFs exist alongside the physical ones. A synthetic fund on a qualified index receives the gross total return of the index through a swap, with no US withholding suffered inside the fund at all — the $90 above goes to zero. The price is structural: the fund's return depends on a swap counterparty rather than on holding the shares, with collateral arrangements in place of direct ownership. Whether that trade is worth roughly 9 basis points of yield is a judgement, not arithmetic, and fee levels vary by provider. Check the factsheet for the replication method — "synthetic" or "swap-based" against "physical" — before assuming which kind of fund you are looking at.
Accumulating or distributing: CNDX against EQQQ
Since the index is identical, the CNDX-versus-EQQQ choice is about structure. CNDX accumulates: dividends are reinvested inside the fund, nothing lands as cash, there is no reinvestment friction and nothing that could be mistaken for a contribution — useful where dividends are taxed on receipt, because nothing is received. But several residences tax accumulating funds anyway, on a deemed or imputed basis, and a few treat them less favourably than distributing funds. EQQQ's distributing class pays cash in the ordinary way, which suits income-oriented investors and anyone claiming a foreign tax credit against tax actually visible on a statement; its accumulating share class exists for those who want the Invesco fund and the CNDX behaviour.
Which is better depends on the residence you actually have, not on which is tidier.
What to do once you have chosen
Both layers of this comparison are invisible on a brokerage statement. Withholding suffered inside an Irish fund never appears anywhere — it is deducted before the fund is paid — and the fee drag shows up nowhere except in the NAV. BorderFolio estimates the withholding per instrument, using the domicile of each fund you actually hold against the tax residence you configure, and keeps the estimate attached to your real dividend history rather than to a hypothetical portfolio. If you hold QQQ from before a move to Europe and CNDX after it, or you are weighing the switch and want the numbers on your own position rather than on $100,000, that is precisely the case it is built for.
Limitations
- The example is an illustration, not your portfolio. The Nasdaq-100's yield moves; at a higher yield the withholding gap widens and the ranking can change.
- Treaty rates depend on paperwork. Without valid documentation on file the statutory 30% applies whatever the treaty table says.
- The second step is not modelled here. Tax where you live, credits and their caps, and the treatment of accumulating funds are all residence-specific.
- Fund data ages. TERs, share classes, fund sizes and listings are as published in September 2026; the factsheet is the authority.
- Not advice. This is an informational comparison of fund structures, not a recommendation to buy or sell any of them. See the investment & tax disclaimer.