Investment & Investing

And listen to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHf1sAmCk8o

Thanks, will find some time to watch.

Nah, I’m not worried. I don’t have much there, and everything was very clear it’s for the long term, goes up and down, etc

But its also possible I’m more of a cash ISA person, and that’s fine too.

Have got a S&S ISA with Vanguard following advice from this thread and it’s doing well for not much in the way of fees - thanks!

Have got a LISA kicking around from when we bought our house and figured it may be worth chucking a small amount in there each year to start building a retirement fund. It’s currently Skipton but would want to transfer it to someone who does an S&S option with an ETF to make the most of those compound interest gains. Vanguard would be ideal but no LISA option with them so just wondered if there were any other lower fee options out there? The Nutmeg fees were significant in comparison to Vanguard so would like to avoid defaulting for them if there are better options out there.

Tax withholding on shares works out to be 53% of the gross value of the shares (before fees / deductions, so more like 55-58% if it is applied post-fees)... does that sound right? Is it the higher rate income tax and additional National Insurance?

Can you add a bit more detail / reword what you are asking?

Is that the correct rate of withholding?

Tax withholding on shares

what's the taxable event you are asking about; dividend payment, capital gains tax, something else?

Sale of share options in a secondary event on NASDAQ

Presuming this is the same as mine. When your shares vest before you can sell them a portion of them are sold to cover your tax liability - mine seems to be 53ish percent, which I am also not sure is correct?

Mine are through E*Trade (or whatever they are called now)

I am not an expert, and more info might be needed by an expert to tell you definitively.

It sounds high to me, but there are lots of variables. I suspect a NASDAQ listed co’s stock option scheme is “unapproved” from a UK perspective. So it might get no tax relief. If it is all taxed as income, and not part of any approved tax efficient scheme, it might be 45% lost to tax plus national insurance contribution, which I think is 2% on the employee. As to where the rest of it has gone:

1) I vaguely remember there is one scenario where an employer can push employer’s NICS onto the employee, I can’t remember if this is that scenario.

2) have they deducted a “buy in” price from it? IE did the option have a value when you obtained it, that you didn’t pay for at that point but are paying for now, on exercise?

More importantly, is 42-45% of an amount still enough for a field?

More importantly, is 42-45% of an amount still enough for a field?

Well I'm keeping none of this for spending, it's just going onto the mortgage to reduce it a bit.

The % of tax just affects how much of a dent that is.

mine seems to be 53ish percent

At least it's consistent, but I'll ask my boss what he's doing here... as the % doesn't result in a massive amount of $ for me, but for him it does, and so if it's wrong then he's going to be on it.

I seem to get 53% of share options too, after the rest are sold, via sell to cover, to cover income tax liabilities.

Best way of transferring from e-trade in usd to a uk bank and incurring the smallest possible fees?

Wise

Thanks!

Should be relatively straightforward? Not me but my wife (I’m currently over the middle of the Atlantic and being asked what to do 😂)

For reference I paid a flat £6 fee and got a rate of 1.32710 USD/GBP on 16th August. This was a SWIFT/CHAPS transfer from the US to my bog standard Barclays Bank current account.

Their listed FX Reference Rate on that day was 1.2916 USD/GBP and their FX Margin Percentage was 2.75% (these combine to make the 1.32710 USD/GBP rate they did the conversion on).

So if I'd transferred $10k I'd have paid £6 plus (10k/1.2916)-(10k/1.3271) =~ £200 in fees.

If I was transferring $100k I'd probably pay a bit more attention.

Yeah it’s more than your last figure

That seems high to me, from experience of vesting RSUs and PSUs on a tax election of net shares. Fairly sure the tax rate was around 45%.

It's "just income", so what would be the marginal rate if it were arriving as cash? That's the tax part so then anything extra is something magic.

Wise is very straightforward to use, but their fees are higher than Revolut (which is another option). Cheapest of all is a HSBC global money account apparently. Surprisingly, Nationwide are pretty good too. Definitely don't use most High St banks though, they give you a poor conversion rate, well below market rates.

(We get RSUs for the company listing on NASDAQ and one guy internally crowdsourced the best options for transferring USD to GBP and documented it all on Confluence).

Hold onto dollars as the pound will weaken (I have no sound basis for this statement).

It appears my wife concluded with your colleague and is using hsbc

A previous time I transferred more than that the USD/GBP rate was > 1.6.

*cries in poor FX rates*

Given the numbers mentioned elsewhere this sounds like something you should be talking to a professional about.