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I did try to research this forum and the web but couldn't find the exact information I need. Hope you can help. My situation:
Non-Resident Alien in a country without Tax Treaty (Brazil)
Already have a Schwab One International Account
Around 20k USD in cash my Schwab account in US
About 150k USD invested in my country of residence (not moving this abroad for now, citing to show the money in US is not my whole wealth)
I want to invest the 20k following bogleheads guidelines but got a few questions.
As I'm a non-resident alien, I should use Irish ETFs for stocks due to taxation reasons. Schwab only seems to offer actively managed Irish Mutual Funds. Is that correct? did I miss something?
For bonds, is there any difference between Irish domiciled ETFs and US-domiciled ones? Do I still pay the 30% tax on dividends for those funds? Or does it work differently for bonds somehow?
If I open an account on Interactive brokers, I'd be paying 10 USD/month, which seems significant on top of only 20k USD. I pay zero commission on Schwab's ETFs right now. As I only have 20k USD for now (below the 60k USD exemption for estate taxes), seems worth staying in Schwab even if paying dividends tax. What am I missing in this analysis?
Some additional details:
My horizon for this money in US is of 5-10 years, so I'm leaning to put most of it in bonds.
I might move to US and become a resident in a few years. I worry that I plan around investing in Ireland just to have to un-do everything really quickly. This pushes me even harder to just use Schwab on US ETFs and be done with it. What am I missing?
Besides questions above, anything I'm forgetting to think about?