richard42

Hi all,

We moved to Houston in January this year.

We still have our home in the UK, son and g/f are living in it at the moment.

When I was researching the L1B visa and moving over here I'm sure that I saw some place that I must sell the UK house and transfer the funds within 12 months of moving over here, or the 'token rental' could be considered a business income, and the capital gains tax could be as much as 40%?

I'm aware of the 'owned it for at least 2 years' - I have owned the property since 2001, and 'lived in it for at least 2 years' - I've lived there since 2001 and the Mrs lived there for 1.5 years until we moved, so I think we will qualify for $250k capital gains tax allowance. Would we qualify for a pro-rata married coupe allowance?

Or do I need to pay UK capital gains tax?



Thanks,
Richard Wood

Cook_County

It is $250,000 per person if each meets the ownership & use tests. The big problem is the taxable foreign currency gain if you have Sterling mortgage. On that you may owe tax to the IRS.

richard42

The mortgage has £0.01p outstanding (we kept it open on advice from the bank that to keep the house deeds safe would cost us a couple £ hundred a year, but keeping a zero balance mortgage going for as long as we wanted was free) and can be closed at any time.

Re the allowance, I've read from a link posted in another thread here that the spouse does not have to meet the ownership requirements? Anyway, she doesn't meet the use requirements, so it's looking like I'll only get $250,000 allowance.