witholding on US pension distribution

I've reported on witholding tax on my us pension distributions before and here's some good news. I'm a US citizen, UK resident. 3 years ago both Fidelity and TIAA said they were required to take 10% witholding on distributions. 2 years ago Fidelity said they didn't have to take any witholding. This year, TIAA has finally followed suit (although they messed up the administration of this, then rectified). It's just one less little hassle - there's no tax to claim with my US return, and there's now no need to fill out the UK foreign tax credit page. If you're in the same boat, by all means tell your pension company you don't want witholding and see how it goes. The tide seems to be turning.

What form did you fill out? what is the justification for 0% withholding for a US citizen? I remember going through this once and got no joy from TIAA-CREF so the change of policy is interesting.

I'm also a little puzzled by your using FTC on the UK return, surely the UK should get the full amount of tax and then you use the UK tax and the 10% withholding to deal with your US taxes.....probably resulting in a 10% refund of the original withholding tax.

Since TIAA always gets the transaction wrong, in the past I've filled out any number of forms. I know that W8-Ben was one of them. They haven't asked for any in the last couple of years. All they wanted to know was whether I was a USC. I figured I was lucky enough to get the no-witholding without confusing things by asking for a reason. A couple of years ago, Fidelity had told me that their tax specialists were absolutely certain that witholding was no longer required. I didn't have the will to press it further.
you're right - i don't take the uk FTC. got that wrong

Well if you are getting the pension with zero withholding don't rock the boat. It saves you the annoyance of only receiving 90% of your pension and then claiming the 10% back as a refund.

The W-8BEN is only for non-residents aliens and should not be filed by a US citizen. I think you should have filed a W-4P and if either TIAA or Fidelity know you are living abroad they should be applying the minimum withholding .The only argument I could come up with for 0% withholding was a tortuous application of Article 23 which was pretty far fetched.

I think you are the beneficiary of an error by TIAA and Fidelity, but I'd love to be proved wrong and understand their reasoning. Maybe there's some private ruling and the IRS are now treating US expats the same as US residents.

I pointed many, many times that w8-ben isn't for USC's but they've insisted ...

Well that might be an explanation. If there's a W-8BEN on file 0% withholding would be possible.