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Topic: How to prepare to bring money from US to UK to house purchase - where to start  (Read 2090 times)

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      Like many I am SO glad I found this site before i got into finding expensive tax advisors. I have returned to the UK after 24 years living in the US. In that time I also became a US citizen (although reading some of these articles, maybe now I need to look at that too....!).

      I am not quite ready to retire (i am 62) but didn't want the stress of my 'big' career anymore so am doing something fun and have gone way off grid to become cabin crew for Virgin Atlantic! The salary is awful of course but its what i need for the next few years until i retire. As a result I do have to make some sensible decisions about living and, having been in jobs where i moved a LOT in the US, I want to get a house/flat where I can settle for a while and also not be subject to the huge rents here! I am renting at the moment but want to be in a position to buy when my lease ends in May next year so am starting to thing about divesting monies from the US to do so. I have a great financial advisor at Morgan Stanley US that i have been with for a long time and trust. I have a combo of 401k, IRA, rothIRA and investments with them. We have completed all the necessary paperwork with MS needed for my move back to allow my funds to continue be managed by them via the UK. My advisor is however NOT familiar with any tax implications in the UK. I also have a trusted CPA in the US too that I want to continue to work with. My tax filing in the US is up to date.The 3 of us are talking about staring to move investments around to most efficiently manage tax burden if I want to start taking 401k funds and other draw downs soon, but I would welcome any general advice on where I am at from this experienced group....

      Any big immediate do's/don'ts/gotchas?

      Ive started browsing the many great topics on this site but there are so many, so maybe my input into my own topic here is a better way to start or for some of you to direct me to existing topics that might help!

      Today's task was to start my information gathering, so finding this site has made me feel a LOT better
« Last Edit: September 03, 2024, 03:45:12 PM by andscott1 »


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Even before making plans to move back to England my wife and I rolled our 401ks to IRAs because the IRA brokerage fees were much less and the choice of funds were much better. This is a non-taxable event. However, if you have any non-deductible IRAs then these should first be converted to a Roth since you can’t convert just the non taxable portion of an IRA, all one’s IRAs are lumped together and any conversion could result in only a small fraction of the conversion being paid tax free.

If you have mutual funds in an after-tax account that have an ETF equivalent then I would also convert those over to their ETF version as this would also be a non-taxable event and the majority of ETFs are “HMRC Reporting “ so will attract the lower tax rates when or if you move back.

We also discovered that our US bank did not allow overseas customers so we switched banks as well, a year or so before moving back.
Dual USC/UKC living in the UK since May 2016


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