Just a quick question regarding US Withholding taxes, hope someone can confirm I'm correct with the below. I've opened an account with TD Ameritrade with the intention of investing in some ETFs and just trying to make sure I'm understanding the withholding tax correctly :

1. If there's dividend payouts - they'll be charged at 30% Withholding taxes
2. If I opt for dividends to be automatically re-invested, this avoids the 30% withholding tax
3. In case of Nr 2, once the ETF is sold, there's no CGT to be paid

Thanks in advance. I've invested through UK brokers before but not the US

According to the Help section on HSBC MY :

Provide 9 digit beneficiary bank’s ABA (American
Bank Association )/Fedwire routing number
followed by the beneficiary account number


The ABA should be sufficient, as there isn't anywhere to input BIC/SWIFT

For any TD Ameritrade users - have you ever had issues funding your account via Wire transfer?

I made my initial deposit on Friday and got an e-mail today that the payment was rejected and returned - and TD can't tell me the reason.

Also cost me $44 USD in bank charges

Yep, the payment was sent to First National Bank of Omaha, I called TD Ameritrade before to confirm their SWIFT code. All my name and details were in order as they should have been, I'll call TDAT again today to see if they can give me a reason (yesterday was Martin Luther King day, ie. banks not working) - don't want to waste $44 USD again for the payment to get returned again The only restriction they told me is that the funds must be coming from an account in my own name.

My bank didn't give me much info :

Nope, not the issue - I'm gwei loh so my name is the same way around, and the payment didn't come from an Asian bank.

I'll see what they tell me later - need to wait until night time due to the time difference

Yeah, that's quite slow .. especially if the post wasn't to arrive. I'd prefer to do it by transfer

Anyway, spoken to them and apparently the funds were rejected due to the location of my bank (Isle of Man) as they're not allowed to have customers from there but maybe can accept fund deposits from there.

I'll use Maybank next time

What's the cost to issue a bank draft/demand draft from a Malaysian bank?

I did TT in the end to TDA, arrived in less than 24 hours

Hmm I see - I'm holding USD in Maybank so there's no need for RM>USD conversion.

Even though the charges I prefer TT, I think the total came to $36 USD in fees all in

$50-$60 seems expensive - I transfer often from HK to Labuan in USD and the receiving charge is only about $15 USD or so, maybe from US is different

HK Charges $14.60 USD (approximately, it's in HKD and depends on exchange rate) to send

Usually it's a minimum of $10k at least so the fees aren't a major % of the overall payment.

This is always from/to USD accounts so there's no exchange of currencies involved.

Labuan Maybank is USD account, can hold in USD - they only charge a $4 for receiving (apart from what's taken by the intermediary banK)

From there I transfer to Maybank MYR/USD account the charge is $4 USD and no receiving charges to either (but of course, exchange rate applies of transferring to MYR acc)

From past experience dealing with US companies, the wire fees there are always quite expensive.

The only way I can think of is signing up to a HSBC Premier account in USA and aHSBC Premier USD account in Malaysia.

That way you should be able to withdraw to the HSBC USD account and transfer to Malaysia or HK without any fees. But this requires a RM200K deposit with HSBC in Malaysia (or HKD 1million in HK!)

Maybe transferring from US to a Maybank USD account rather than MYR will result in less charges?

Charges can vary a fair bit - I transferred from Labuan to IOM , UK and was charged $25 in IOM, $4 + $8.12 in Labuan. Another time I transferred from UK to UK and was charged over $100 USD

This post has been edited by rjb123: Jan 30 2014, 02:25 AM

If you have a Premier account, transfers between all accounts are instant and free of charge

If you can meet the minimum balance in any country, you automatically become eligible for Premier status in all countries

Tried Interactive Brokers for the first time - can't say I like the interface at all but the fees seem far more reasonable than TDAM for non commission free ETFs.

Looks like transfer in, cost me $35

Yeah, I've signed up to paper trade account to play around a bit (but takes 24 hours to be active) whilst leaving my normal account which is mainly for long term holdings anyway.

RUSS - Daily Russia Bear 3x Shares today?

Any other IB users can confirm - even if you don't sign up to any of their feeds etc. they still charge a $10 monthly fee if there's no trades done?

Hmm I came across the $10 monthly fee if there's no trades, maybe I'm reading it wrong. Annoying if that's the case as I'm not an active trader - but my fault for not reading fully. Will need to login later when I find the security card to see if I've been charged

With TT you have 3 options :

1 - Sender bears all charges
2 - Receiver bears all charges
3 - Sender and receiver share charges

The default (unless you specify when sending) is 3, in which case charges will be as below - Maybank charge $4+ if sent from FCA + TT Charge ($12? can't remember, don't have payment copies to hand!)

Pretty much same for me - to IB or TDAM, same 24 USD charge, actually this is taken by the intermediary bank, not the receiving bank. By default when sharing charges the receiver pays intermediary bank charges.

I believe wongmunkeong was doing the transaction online - hence the limit. I've done all of my TTs in branch, so far each time $10K exactly and no issues and funds usually arrive in the US the same day