After some confusion I think I'm seeing the light. Just to reprise my potential
situation I'm a US citizen moving to the UK to work this Fall. It looks like I'll
be a UK tax resident. I want to save some money in GBPs for a car and a house downpayment
so I want something safe, but with some potential for gain. I learned that
UK mutual funds were a very bad idea for a Us citizen to buy due to nasty taxes,
but I don't want to keep changing pounds to dollars to send it back to the US
to buy mutual funds, just to have to sell them and convert back to pounds,
seems complicated.
So would something like a National Savings Guaranteed Equity Bond be ok
wrt US taxation.
Then I found that I might be able to avoid UK tax on my interest if I open
a GBP offshore bank in somewhere like the Isle of Man and that they offer
Guaranteed Equity Bonds too. I know that I'd have to pay US tax on these,
but are they non-PFIC and are the gains taxed as interest?