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I have scrounged the internet and havent found the answer.

I have an interactive brokers account with the dual tax treaty of 15% on dividends. Does anyone know how Vanguard handles the tax of the Europe ETF (Germany tax rate: 26% and other european countries with varying tax rates)? I suspect i get taxed double and it would be better to just own the Vanguard ETF equivalent in Euro terms.

CL

I wrote a long story on Sunday trying to put what I thought about your dilemma. @Andre put it concisely what I was thinking... You have to start somewhere and until its worth it only then do you convert to IB or a broker like that. I paid all those school fees but in hindsight I can't say I could have done different...

I tend to agree with GCR on this. I am an engineer working for a large engineering company and earn relative to my peers a median salary. However, my net worth is probably significantly more than those earning significantly more due to my chosen lifestyle ie making occupation not that relevant. Patrick himself is a good example too...

Dear Orca, I'm so sorry to hear that it's not going well with your wife. All the best.

Yoh! Now that would be great!

Thought I'd give some feedback here. I've opened an account with ClickFX, painless except for the FICA always having issues. Account was opened within 1 day after submitting the documents.

How does it work:
1. You have to first transfer your Rands (including the R350 fee) to an account held by Mercantile Bank
2. Send the proof of payment and bank details you want to transfer to (as per their instructions)
3. They will then load this onto the ClickFX website (I haven't gotten to this step yet)
4. You can then execute the trade with the indicated rate.

Rate (8:40am):
Spot = R13.53
Indication Rate: 13.6497 (so about at 10c spread)

If i understood the question correctly, all you need is to open a brokerage account that offers international stocks and ETFs. The ones I know are Standard Bank Webtrader (fees 0.25% pa - too high), ABSA Word Trader (fees 0.1% pa), Sanlam iTrade (fees 0,25% pa) and Saxo Bank (no fees - but minimum initial amount required by Saxo Bank is $10,000 but all the other guys require a minimum initial amount of $1,000). When you brokerage is up and running, you can simply transfer the money to the brokers bank account then you good to go. To buy Vanguard ETFs, just enter the name of the ETF you want to buy then click buy. That's just about it

Except SAXO charge you USD100 if the account is inactive for 6months! Thanks for pointing me to ABSA's management fee for EXACTLY the same platform as Std's Webtrader. The fee is 0.2% not 0.25% but still twice ABSA's! Let's see what they have to say for themselves about this...

Quote from: conradl on December 23, 2016, 03:03:42 pm

Quote from: Patrick on December 23, 2016, 12:10:55 pm

Personally I would if practical change brokerages. $20 is huge, I pay $1.70 minimum or 0.08% with interactive brokers.

I've looked at the website. What do you pays in fees? It shows that monthly fee is $20 pm? And you need $100k invested with them. How do you claim back your 15% dividend tax if the tax rate in USA is 30% on dividends?

If you have less than $100k invested then there's a minimum fee of $10 per month. Your trading costs are part of this, so if you trade for $6 a month, you'll need to pay an extra $4 at month end. If you have over $100k there's no monthly fee. I'm fortunate enough to be in this group. We have a double tax treaty with the USA, so you will only be taxed 15% on dividends. I don't know how it works because I just buy VWRD which has the tax taken off at source.

Unfortunately, $100k is a long way off for us  How do you go about getting that other 15% back Patrick?