News for long-term investors
Last updated: August 12, 2026
Tax rules change, retirement vehicles get rewritten, and the products available to ordinary savers look different every few years. Most of it never makes the front page, and almost none of it is written for someone who simply wants to keep investing steadily for the next twenty years. This section collects the changes that actually matter for that plan.
Every entry names a date, says what changed, and explains why it matters for a long-term investor. Nothing here is a market commentary: a rate move or an index level only appears when it changed the rules of the game, not because it moved. Each entry cites the official source — a ministry, a regulator, a central bank, or the legal text itself — so you can check it yourself.
The entries are grouped two ways. By country, for the seven jurisdictions covered here, where you will find the full text of each change. And by topic, if you care more about taxation or retirement than about borders. The newest entries come first everywhere.
Latest changes
- Trump Accounts open for contributionsUnited States
- Political agreement on EU Retail Investment StrategyEuropean Union
- One Big Beautiful Bill Act enactedUnited States
- SNB cuts policy rate back to 0%Switzerland
Rules change; the arithmetic does not. Put your own contributions, rate and horizon into the calculator and see what a change is worth over twenty years.
Open the calculatorBy country
The 27.5% KESt, crypto pulled inside the ordinary tax net, MiFID II — and a holding-period exemption promised by two governments and enacted by neither.
The FHSA, rising TFSA room and Home Buyers' Plan limits, the CPP enhancement, the DSC ban — and a capital gains hike announced, then cancelled.
MiFID II and PRIIPs, the payment-for-order-flow ban, ELTIF 2.0 and PEPP, and the Savings and Investments Union now being built on top of them.
The 2018 fund tax reform and the Vorabpauschale, a doubled saver's allowance, the ETF savings-plan boom, and two retirement reforms arriving in 2027.
PIR accounts and BTP Valore, a crypto tax regime rewritten twice in three years, and the auto-enrolment that now moves severance pay into pension funds.
Retroactive pillar 3a buy-ins, AHV 21, the end of negative interest rates, the abolished imputed rental value, and the reforms voters turned down.
The SECURE Acts, commissions falling to zero, spot Bitcoin ETFs, the TCJA and its 2025 sequel, and the fiduciary rules that courts struck down twice.
By topic
How investment income is taxed keeps moving: allowances and rates, the Vorabpauschale, new crypto regimes, and Canada's cancelled capital gains hike.
The vehicles people actually retire on: SECURE 2.0, pillar 3a buy-ins, the CPP enhancement, TFR auto-enrolment and Germany's new retirement depots.
MiFID II, PRIIPs, FIDLEG, the payment-for-order-flow ban and the fiduciary rules that failed in court — how the selling of products was rewritten.
ETF savings plans, spot Bitcoin ETFs, PIR and FHSA accounts, BTP Valore and ELTIF 2.0: what savers can buy, and at what cost, keeps widening.
The end of negative interest rates, the inflation squeeze, T+1 settlement and zero-commission trading — shifts that changed long-term arithmetic.
Where standard advice was revised: trading costs at zero, banned sales charges, standardised fund disclosure, and what negative real rates did to cash.
Limit changes large enough to alter a savings plan: Germany's doubled saver's allowance, retroactive pillar 3a buy-ins, TFSA, FHSA and catch-up rules.