MTC1983

Hi there,
So glad I have stumbled upon this forum. I am a British citizen married for 37 years to an American. We lived and worked in the UK for 14 years and raised out daughter (duel citizen) we moved to the US in 1996. 8 years ago my daughter moved back to the UK and is now permanently resident there raising her family.

This year due to COVID we have been unable to visit and so have decided that we cannot be this far away from her and will be looking to move back to the UK in the next year.
Some things about us:
We have a house in the UK , we both have National insurance Nos and British Driving licenses, bank account and a dog :-)
we will be needing to transfer $$$$ from the sale of our US house and also have several IRA accounts and Pensions.
Lot's of questions and don't know where to start
So, I am looking for advice on the steps needed to make this move... Is there a company that specializes in this sort of thing that can do all the paper work?
is there someone on this forum that has done this?

any help would be greatly appreciated.
regards
Michael

SanDiegogirl

First things first.... does your American wife also have British citizenship? If not, then she'll need a visa to live in the UK

MTC1983

No, that was something that we debated while she lived in the UK, but never did she does have an old passport that has a visa allowing her to work.

SanDiegogirl

You have been out of the UK for 24 years, and, although you have retained a house in the UK (presume your dog is with you in the US!) you are going to have to obtain a visa for your wife.
The following website gives all info:
https://www.gov.uk/uk-family-visa

There is the Returning resident visa - but, after 24 years out of the country I doubt you would get this:
https://www.gov.uk/returning-resident-visa

The majority of people moving from US to UK, even those who have to get a visa for their spouses , do it themselves as the forms are fairly straightforward.

Moving your pensions and IRA are a whole different matter (most people again seem to leave them where they are) but others can respond on this.

MTC1983

many thanks for your quick response.
those look like good links - checking them out now.

durham_lad

My wife and I moved back to England after 29 years away and we continue to manage our US pensions, private and SS, and IRAs from England.

MTC1983

Thanks! that good to know. So the pension etc is paid into a US bank that you then transfer from to UK?
do you use a service to do your US tax returns?
would you mind sharing some of your other steps that you took when you moved back?

durham_lad

We have a US bank into which my US private pensions are paid and which is linked to our brokerage for transfer of funds to and from.

We use TransferWise to move money over. We plan on having SS paid directly to our UK bank.

We also have an after tax dividend paying equity fund that we converted to an HMRC reporting fund so it receives the lower UK tax rates for dividends and capital gains.

We both did voluntary NI contributions so we get close to the max of the OAP.

We do use a tax service to do our returns.

MTC1983

did you figure all this out yourself, or have someone steer you?

durham_lad

Just forums like this over the years plus webinars and such.

There is a webinar on April 1st for example on taxes.

https://www.greenbacktaxservices.com...ments-webinar/

List of documents for taxes

http://info.greenbacktaxservices.com...=hs_automation

MTC1983

Thankyou - I just registered for the Greenbacks webinar.

MTC1983

There was a lot of good info - didn't know anything about FBAR :-(

durham_lad

Glad you found it informative.

Frankie0089

Hi Durham Lad, I’m just curious - did you have to maintain a US address in order to manage your private pension? My financial advisor told me I will need to keep one as the financial institution my IRA is with is not licensed to do business overseas. Why would this be an issue if I maintained a US bank account?

durham_lad

I do use a correspondence US address for the Brokerage holding our IRAs but I’m not sure it is necessary, although I believe not having a US bank would be a problem. For my 2 US private pensions they only have my UK address but again they pay into my US bank. Our US bank only has our UK address.

At a webinar this week by Greenback Taxes this question or similar was asked and they suggested that if you don’t have a relative or friend whose address you could use then a mail forwarding service doesn’t cost very much and is a street address rather than a PO Box. Good info for me because our daughter plans to leave the USA in 5 to 10 years time should I need to maintain a US address for the brokerage.