Bringing money to UK for investment purposes
Transfers of money to the UK for any purpose are not generally taxed, so you can just transfer it here and invest. Once the money is here, you'll be taxed on the business activity like anyone else - the company will have to pay corporation tax, and depending on your own residency you might have to pay income tax on any distributions from the company.
"No.  This is too much for most individuals, even some small to medium businesses.  When you sell that investment, and take the cheque into the foreign bank and wire it back to the USA in US dollars, you will definitely obtain the final value of the investment, converted to US$. Thats what you wanted, right?  You'll get that.  If you also hedge, unless you have a situation where it is a perfect hedge, then you are gambling on what the currencies will do. A perfect hedge is unusual for what most individuals are involved in. It looks something like this:  you know ForeignCorp is going to pay you 10 million quatloos on Dec 31.  So you go to a bank (probably a foreign bank, I've found they have lower limits for this kind of transaction and more customizable than what you might create trading futures contracts), and tell them, ""I have this contract for a 10 million quatloo receivable on Dec 31, I'd like to arrange a FX forward contract and lock in a rate for this in US$/quatloo.""  They may have a credit check or a deposit for such an arrangement, because as the rates change either the bank will owe you money or you will owe the bank money. If they quote you 0.05 US$/quatloo, then you know that when you hand the cheque over to the bank your contract payment will be worth US$500,000.  The forward rate may differ from the current rate, thats how the bank accounts for risk and includes a profit. Even with a perfect hedge, you should be able to see the potential for trouble.  If the bank doesnt quite trust you, and hey, banks arent known for trust, then as the quatloo strengthens relative to the US$, they may suspect that you will walk away from the deal.  This risk can be reduced by including terms in the contract requiring you to pay the bank some quatloos as that happens.  If the quatloo falls you would get this money credited back to your account.  This is also how futures contracts work; there it is called ""mark to market accounting"".  Trouble lurks here.  Some people, seeing how they are down money on the hedge, cancel it.  It is a classic mistake because it undoes the protection that one was trying to achieve.  Often the rate will move back, and the hedger is left with less money than they would have had doing nothing, even though they bought a perfect hedge." I would say your decision making is reasonable.  You are in the middle of Brexit and nobody knows what that means.  Civil society in the United States is very strained at the moment.  The one seeming source of stability in Europe, Germany, may end up with a very weakened government.  The only country that is probably stable is China and it has weak protections for foreign investors. Law precedes economics, even though economics often ends up dictating the law in the long run. The only thing that may come to mind is doing two things differently.  The first is mentally dropping the long-term versus short-term dichotomy and instead think in terms of the types of risks an investment is exposed to, such as currency risk, political risk, liquidity risk and so forth.  Maturity risk is just one type of risk. The second is to consider taking some types of risks that are hedged either by put contracts to limit the downside loss, or consider buying longer-dated call contracts using a small percentage of your money.  If the underlying price falls, then the call contracts will be a total loss, but if the price increases then you will receive most of the increase (minus the premium). If you are uncomfortable purchasing individual assets directly, then I would say you are probably doing everything that you reasonably can do. A) a tax treaty probably covers this for the avoidance of double taxation. Tax treaties can be very cryptic and have little precedence clarifying them http://www.irs.gov/businesses/international/article/0,,id=169552,00.html B) I'm going to say NO since the source of your income is going to be US based. But the UK tax laws might also have specific verbage for resident source income. sorry it is an inconclusive answer, but should be some factors to consider and point you in the right direction. Can I transfer these money to India in my saving account? What will be tax implication to me? Yes you can. Whether you transfer to India or not does not change your tax obligation. If I understand correctly you are being paid an allowance in UK to cover your expense. If you are saving; then the saving portion is treated as income and you have to self declare this and pay tax according to you tax bracket. Can I transfer these money to my wife's account as a gift? What will be tax implication to me and my wife? There is no tax obligation to your wife. The tax obligation remain same to you as in first point. What if i transfer these money as loan refund to my friend? What will be tax implication for these to me and my friend? If there is proper paper trial to show your friend loaned you a sum at zero percentage and you have paid back; amounts are not to large; then there is no tax obligation to your friend. The tax obligation remains same to you as in point 1. "Is he affiliated with the company charging this fee? If so, 1% is great. For him. You are correct, this is way too high. Whatever tax benefit this account provides is negated over a sufficiently long period of time. you need a different plan, and perhaps, a different friend. I see the ISA is similar to the US Roth account. Post tax money deposited, but growth and withdrawals tax free. (Someone correct, if I mis-read this). Consider - You deposit £10,000. 7.2% growth over 10 years and you'd have £20,000. Not quite, since 1% is taken each year, you have £18,250.  Here's what's crazy. When you realize you lost £1750 to fees, it's really 17.5% of the £10,000 your account would have grown absent those fees. In the US, our long term capital gain rate is 15%, so the fees after 10 years more than wipe out the benefit.  We are not supposed to recommend investments here, but it's safe to say there are ETFs (baskets of stocks reflecting an index, but trading like an individual stock) that have fees less than .1%.  The UK tag is appreciated, but your concern regarding fees is universal. Sorry for the long lecture, but ""1%, bad.""" "The London Stock Exchange offers a wealth of exchange traded products whose variety matches those offered in the US.  Here is a link to a list of exchange traded products listed on the LSE.  The link will take you to the list of Vanguard offerings.  To view those offered by other managers, click on the letter choices at the top of the page.  For example, to view the  iShares offerings, click on ""I"". In the case of Vanguard, the LSE listed S&P500 ETF is traded under the code VUSA.  Similarly, the Vanguard All World ETF trades under the code VWRL.  You will need to be patient viewing iShares offerings since there are over ten pages of them, and their description is given by the abbreviation ""ISH name"". Almost all of these funds are traded in GBP. Some offer both currency hedged and currency unhedged versions.  Obviously, with the unhedged version you are taking on additional currency risk, so if you wish to avoid currency risk then choose a currency hedged version.  Vanguard does not appear to offer currency hedged products in London while iShares does.  Here is a list of iShares currency hedged products.  As you can see, the S&P500 currency hedged trades under the code IGUS while the unhedged version trades under the code IUSA. The effects of BREXIT on UK markets and currency are a matter of opinion and difficult to quantify currently.  The doom and gloom warnings of some do not appear to have materialised, however the potential for near-term volatility remains so longs as the exit agreement is not formalised.  In the long-term, I personally believe that BREXIT will, on balance, be a positive for the UK, but that is just my opinion." "Although there are occasional cases where simply moving money between countries results in a tax liability - for example a ""non-domiciled"" UK resident using the ""remittance basis"" - this is not the case in your situation. In general it would be extremely rare for non-residents of a country to be taxed on bringing money into that country, as it would be bad for tourism which most countries want to encourage. The requirement to declare large sums of money on entry is primarily so that the authorities can detect money laundering, rather than tax. Note that you will have to pay US tax on any interest you earn on that US bank account." I've done this for many years, and my method has always been to get a bank draft from my Canadian bank and mail it to my UK bank. The bank draft costs $7.50 flat fee and the mail a couple of dollars more. That's obviously quite a lot to pay on $100, so I do this only every six months or so and make the regular payments out of my UK account. It ends up being only a couple of percent in transaction costs, and the exchange rate is the bank rate. Huh. It appears it's only currencies in sterling that are fully exempt. https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/capital-gains-manual/cg12602   Government manuals are more detailed than .gov but still not perfect as it's HMRCs interpretation of legislation and has been overturned in the past.  There is also another (old) article here about foreign currency transactions. https://www.taxation.co.uk/articles/2010/10/27/21191/currency-gains  I have never come across forex capital gains in practice but I've learnt something today! Something to look out for in the UK as well I guess. "The simple answer would be - if you want to take Euros from Germany to Spain as cash and deposit them, you're not breaking any laws, there is nothing to declare to customs (you're still in the EU), it is not ""income"" so there is nothing to tax, and your bank should be able to receive it without issue (no currency conversion after all). It does however come with the risk of loss/theft en route. So it really depends on how comfortable you are walking around with that much on your person. If you don't want to carry that much around and your banks are imposing unreasonable fees, here's something you could investigate further (I have not tested it myself): Transferwise offers a service that lets people send money to foreign accounts (in different currencies) for a small fee, at mid-market rates. However, they also offer a ""request money"" feature which allows EUR-EUR transfers (and some other same currency transfers). So perhaps you could use this feature to simply request money from yourself. The requester puts in how much they want to receive. Then they send a generated link to the other party. When clicked, that link sets up a transaction for the requested amount, and sometimes a nominal fee (I created a link for a GBP-GBP transfer and it wanted 1 pound extra, but when I did the same for EUR-EUR it didn't want any extra). I assume you would need two Transferwise accounts, though maybe not? And I'm not sure whether doing this is technically allowed in their terms of service, so you should read those to be sure. The advantage, if this works, is that neither bank sees it as a ""transfer"". Rather, the originating bank makes a payment to Transferwise, and then Transferwise makes a deposit to the receiving account. So I can't imagine either bank would be able to impose their foreign-bank-transfer fees for the transaction. https://transferwise.com/request-money I have used Transferwise for currency conversions, but not the request money feature, maybe other users could chime in if they have used it." "Money in your NRE/NRO account is your property and moving it to the U.K. is not a taxable event in the U.K. or in India. Extra paperwork is needed for transfer from an NRO account to prove that you have indeed paid taxes (or had taxes withheld) on the money in the NRO account to the Indian Government. Search this site for ""15CB"" and ""15CA"" for details." There are restrictions on transferring money OUT OF Egypt (although less tight than previously: http://www.aawsat.net/2014/01/article55326839 ) but there aren't any such restrictions on sending money INTO Egypt.  If you go to HSBC's retail UK banking pages and locate the page for International Money Transfers, http://www.hsbc.co.uk/1/2/international-money-transfer you can see that you can transfer up to £50,000 per day into Egypt via online banking, £10,000 via telephone banking, or unlimited by visiting the branch. I'm not sure exactly what question you asked them or exactly what they said to you in response, but it sounds like there was some misunderstanding along the way. "I've done exactly what you say at one of my brokers.  With the restriction that I have to deposit the money in the ""right"" way, and I don't do it too often.  The broker is meant to be a trading firm and not a currency exchange house after all.  I usually do the exchange the opposite of you, so I do USD -> GBP, but that shouldn't make any difference. I put ""right"" in quotes not to indicate there is anything illegal going on, but to indicate the broker does put restrictions on transferring out for some forms of deposits.    So the key is to not ACH the money in, nor send a check, nor bill pay it, but rather to wire it in.  A wire deposit with them has no holds and no time limits on withdrawal locations.  My US bank originates a wire, I trade at spot in the opposite direction of you (USD -> GBP), wait 2 days for the trade to settle, then wire the money out to my UK bank.  Commissions and fees for this process are low.  All told, I pay about $20 USD per xfer and get spot rates, though it does take approx 3 trading days for the whole process (assuming you don't try to wait for a target rate but rather take market rate.)" You would think so wouldn't you, after all, it's your money! In practise though, it's not as easy as you might think because anti money laundering and anti fraud laws mean you generally have to withdraw money to the same account you funded your trading from. Some forex trading account providers will allow you to fund from multiple sources, but then insist on putting money back to those sources in some proportion or some order or other. Some forex trading account providers at least claim that they may, AT THEIR DISCRETION, let you do it, IF the destination account is in the same name, but I wouldn't be surprised if they charged you for it, and actually the charges might be somewhat justified if they have to invoke identification procedures to make sure the other account is indeed actually you. You would have to talk to a specific service provider and see if they agree to do what you want, they all have FAQs about funding and withdrawal so you can scan around online for the slightly more flexible ones and then give them a call. You might find it difficult to get any guarantees out of them though. I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say, but in general its pretty simple: She goes to the UK bank and requests a wire transfer, providing your details as a recipient. You then go to your bank, fill the necessary forms for the money-laundaring regulations, you probably also need to pay the taxes on the money to the IRS, and then you have it. If you have 1 million dollars (or is it pounds?), I'm sure you can afford spending several hundreds for a tax attorney to make sure your liabilities are reduced to minimum.