emma4

Hi All,

I am hoping to move back to the UK soon and want to know what is the best way to transfer USD into the UK without being taxed heavily.
I have a UK bank account and want to know if it is best to just take cash back home when I go or transfer it into my UK bank account. We are talking under 20K. I understand you have declare over 10K if you fly with cash?

Thank you.

Editha

There is no tax to pay.

MidAtlantic

As Editha says, there is no tax. I would never take so much cash. The risks just are not worth it.

Transferwise and xe.com seem to be the most commonly mentioned here.

jalby1992

Maybe try Western Union as well I recently had discussions with FX Brokers and they said they work on low margins

Sooyp

I've used xoom.com occasionally. The fee might be lower than wiring the money to a UK account.

madmusician_uk

https://www.worldremit.com/
works well for me. They have a $2000 limit per transaction, but there's nothing to stop you doing multipe transactions afaik.

Pulaski

Like Editha and MidAtlantic said, there is no tax to pay for merely transferring money. I second MidAtlantic's advice to not take cash, as like he said, it is too risky, AND you will be stuck with exchanging it for pounds sterling at the tourist rate which applies for physically currency, and that rate is horrible. It would likely cost you somewhere between 5% and 8% of the value to exchange it - so somewhere around $1,000 -$1,600 of a $20,000 amount!

Transferwise is usually cited here as the best and lowest cost transfer company. You will need to go through their registration process before you are able to transfer money, providing documentation to prove your identity, similar to opening a bank account, so don't expect to sign up and transfer the money ten minutes later.

petitefrancaise

Well, I don't how much you will be transferring but bear in mind that there have been a couple of threads recently about Wells Fargo in particular limiting the amount you can transfer at a time. People have had to open a different bank account to transfer the money. I think anything over $3500 has been difficult to do.

My neighbour, who had worked in banking for a long time in Australia needed to transfer the proceeds of the sale of her house from USA to Aus - she basically threatened to report them to the banking ombudsman to get WF to transfer the money in one go at a decent rate.