Money USA to UK

[denisehr]

hi everyone. does anybody knows how to transfer a large sum of money from usa to uk, we are in the middle of buying a house and we ve money in us that would love to bring here , My sister told me that when she moved to US she just did a normal bank transfer, but UK might have other laws ? is there any weird tax to pay? how does it work? or do i have to get a broker involved? does anybody have experience with this/

Thanks!

Physically transferring the money is easy, assuming it is in a bank account in the states already (ie it's cash and not investments); the bank should be able to wire it directly to your UK bank account for a fee. We transfer money every other month or so, costs us $45 each time. Your UK bank may assess a handling fee to process the wire when it arrives, but should only be a few quid.

As regards taxes, that depends on your tax filing status. If you've paid taxes at source and file the appropriate annual returns in the appropriate countries then in most cases there shouldn't be additional taxes just because you're moving your own money from A to B. For example, we're US citizens so have to file annual tax returns in the US even though we don't live there and have no taxable income there; however we can move our money back and forth as we need to.

Be aware that US institutions are required to report large financial transactions to the IRS which shouldn't cause you any concern if you've paid your taxes etc (it's to do with money laundering, and tracking offshore accounts), but if you haven't....,well, I'd talk to a tax advisor!

We had a house rental deposit plus UK tax savings for 1 year and sent it home in chunks with Transferwise. I found them to be cheap, and it was very convenient. Our US bank were so odd - we could only initiate a wire transfer in our local branch, in person - obviously a bit of a problem as we had left the US at that stage! Calls to the bank fell on deaf ears and I thought I'd have to fly over at one stage. However the money could be called out of our account using an automated system via Transferwise (can't remember the name exactly).

We were sending from our US bank account to our UK bank account. We were tax resident in UK, no tax in US so not sure about the US tax implications.

Also recommend Transferwise. Usually gives much better rates than banks and the fees are low too so overall you'll get more £ for your $. (Also agree that US banks lag massively behind U.K. in terms of online banking/transfers - people still pay bills by check).

I don't think there are any tax implications of moving the money between jurisdictions. If you are US taxpayers, you might have reporting obligations (FBAR and FATCA forms need filing) if the extra money takes your UK account balances over the reporting limits - even if it's just for one day.