nun

Does anyone have any thoughts or siggestions about the following situation.

I'm a UK/US dual citizen and I have all my money in the US, I invest in mutual funds through regular accounts. I am planning to retire and become domiciled in the UK and I want to find a sensible way to keep investing in equities. However, as a US citizen UK funds, unit trusts etc are a bad idea as they are taxed by the IRS in a nasty way. I have looked into just keeping investing in US based mutual funds which I can do as a US citizen even though I'll be resident in the UK, but it looks like I'll loose my UK capital gains tax allowance as they are offshore funds. Is this the best option. Does anyone have other ideas? Is it best just to buy shares?

paddingtongreen

Could you just buy stocks, in your name, that are trade in both USA and EU?

Giantaxe

ETFs?

nun

Yes but in the UK or the US? Are non US EFTs PFIC

Giantaxe

I would suspect that non-US EFTs are indeed PFIC. But I believe there are US ETFs that are also traded on other exchanges. Would the UK treat these differently from any other stock?

paddingtongreen

If they were bought in the punter's name instead of "street name", would the authorities know?

nun

I don't really like the task of buying individual stocks as I hate paying commissions and keeping track of everything. I'm an index (UK tracker) fund sort of investor, so as a US citizen and subject to the PFIC rules that pretty much forces me to look at US based funds, which I can buy as a US citizen. However, those funds will be considered offshore by the UK tax man and I'm not sure how they would be taxed in the UK with me being a UK citizen domiciled in the UK. I think I'd have to declare all dividends etc form them each year to the UK and get credit for the tax I pay in the US. Also I think that any capital gain would be taxed as income in the UK and I wouldn't get the capital gain tax free allowance.

The ideal would be a US based fund that is recognized as a "reporting" fund in the UK, I wonder if those US EFTs mentioned that are traded on other exchanges meet that criterion.