Moving from the US to the UK

And selling a house in the US. How much will I have to pay in taxes to the US before I leave and what is the best way to get the money out of the country??

Please help.

Hi there

Whether you will be taxed on the sale of your house depends on whether this was your principal residence.  If it was, then provided that you owned and occupied this property for 2 out of the last 5 years, gain of $500,000 (if filing MFJ) and $250,000 (if filing MFS) will be exempt from US taxation.

I am not qualified to advise you on the best ways of bringing the proceeds to the UK, but there are other forum members with similar experience. Perhaps they can shed some light on this .....

Helen

Helen,

thank you for your prompt answer, and a good one at that   If there are any members out there who have had to move a large amount of money out of the country and have some advice on how to do it, I would be extremely grateful.

What a great site!!!!

Joanne

Hi there, this is my first question and it has to do with the above query. We to will be needing to move a large amount of money{from the sale of our house}. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

As the gain on sale of principal residence is also exempt in the UK, you can bring the proceeds from the sale of your US home to the UK without any tax consequence.  The fund will keep its nature (i.e. gain on the sale of home) when remited to the UK.

However I recommend that you keep good back up documents (bank statements, closing statements, etc) to show that the money remitted to the UK is indeed from sale of home case the Inland Revenue questions this.

Regards
Helen