dcollins

I was born in the UK which has a statutory residence test (actually several different tests rolled into one). Under the SRT I am non-resident and have declared this to the UK tax authorities (there's a section of the tax return that deals with tax residence and domicile). I actually think part of the problem is that the common reporting standard (which is the basic reason why you have to state your country of tax residency) has been drawn up by people who simply don't comprehend that it is possible not to be tax resident anywhere. I wonder if EU countries have a rule along the lines of "if you haven't become tax resident anywhere else, you are still deemed to be tax resident here". That might explain this mentality but it doesn't fit with the UK system.

Ah, not a concern then.

Does that also mean you take the risk of the company's insolvency? The company that I saw physically segregates your gold (or silver) and just stores it for you, so it's yours come what may. At least that's how the blurb read. I would need to look in more detail before taking the plunge.

I don't actually have a practical problem opening an account, I would just have to lie to do it. Who knows what would happen then. There is a common reporting standard under which the country in which you say you are tax resident gets info about your holdings in other countries. What does HMRC do if it gets a report like that for someone who is showing on their system as non-resident? What does the broker do if they are told that you are not in fact tax resident where you said you were. I don't know but there is the potential for it all to get extremely complicated. It would have cost me quite a bit to ensure that I retained my UK tax resident status. There are definitely downsides to not having a tax home anywhere but it can work out for the best overall. Just depends on your individual circumstances.

All in CHF? Why, wouldn't it make sense to split it between the two?

That isn't correct unfortunately. I don't meet the tax residency criteria for any of the countries I have been in so currently have no tax residency.

Yeah looks like you can buy gold with storage included and they don't treat it as a financial product so you don't have the same regulatory issues. You do obviously have to think about the storage costs and what happens when the time comes to sell. Art is an interesting one. There is US platform I found a couple of days ago but the name of it won't come back to me just now. You can't get out though. They buy stuff and when they decide to sell it they give you your cut. If you are a US resident there is a limited secondary market, but I'm not.

I could keep the CHF I have and switch some GBP to USD maybe. I have been travelling and am not tax resident anywhere. The investment platforms all require you to give an address in a country where you are tax resident. It is not clear what happens if you turn out not to be tax resident in that country - possibly nothing at all - but I don't want to go there.

Yes that's the problem I'm trying to solve / mitigate here. The trouble is I only have access to currencies or maybe precious metals.

It looks like you can buy it with storage included e.g. in Zurich. Obviously you have to trust the seller and factor in storage costs. I guess there might be some kind of exit charge too. On the silver, it looks like the ratio is a little above the average for the last 25 years - so yes I guess it might return to the super long-term trend at some point, but I don't see any particular reason to think that will happen in the next couple of decades.

I have no access to productive assets b/c I can't open a brokerage account. That's why I was asking about currencies. It looks like I can buy gold though. So my options are to leave the cash I have in GBP and CHF or move them to some other currency and/or gold. I will probably buy USD and gold. I would have thought CNY would be depressed at the moment and liable to spring back up in the next 2-3 years so I'll look at that too.

It seems I'm unable to invest in shares or market trackers or the like because of my current residency status. I can switch the cash I'm holding to a different currency / currencies though, with my existing facilities. I already have some in CHF, the rest is GBP. I wasn't keeping an eye on it but it looks like USD has really strengthened over the last couple of months. Is it still worth switching? What about other currencies that are tied to oil? Just looking to minimize the devaluation - any suggestions welcome and I can then look into them.

Each country has its own rules. The fact that your friend gets a pension from the UK and has a bank account probably means he was tax resident there at some point but it doesn't tell you anything about the position now. The UK has a codified statutory residence test that is quite complicated but if you Google for it you will find a flow chart. The Thai test is much simpler and is just about how many days you have spent in Thailand during the calendar year. I'm not sure if the cutoff is 179 or 180 days but it's around there. No idea about Oz. If you meet the criteria for tax residency in a particular country then you are tax resident there, even if you don't end up with a tax bill because you have no income or your income is below the threshold. If you meet the criteria for tax residency in more than one country then you are tax resident in more than one country. It's possible to be tax resident in the UK without spending anything like 6 months of the year there, so there are probably a lot of people out there that are tax resident in both the UK and Thailand. Why does he need to know btw?

I have to file a self assessment return anyway (I have income from UK property). I don't think I would end up paying more income tax or CGT because HMRC know I'm not tax resident and I don't think the income/gains would be treated as arising in the UK if the fund itself was based elsewhere. I have had a surplus of income over expenditure for a while and am now left holding cash at 0% interest with inflation soaring, so finding a solution to that is more of a concern than inheritance tax. I'm not keen on saying I'm tax resident in Thailand when I'm not. If going that route at all I'd rather put down the UK, but I was really looking for investment options that are open to you regardless of residence / on the basis that you're not tax resident anywhere.

I have had a look now and all these providers require you to state a country of residence and say (I'm paraphrasing here) that the services available to you depend on where you're resident. Presumably this is because the services are treated as being provided in that country, and they need to know what legislation they need to comply with. They will also be subject to reporting requirements and need to know where to send their reports. That's how I understand it anyway. Now I wouldn't particularly care if they treated UK legislation as applicable and reported to HMRC, except that HMRC might then go back to them and say "hold on you've got the wrong tax authority - this person is not resident in the UK", and then what would happen to my account? Has this all changed then, or did you just not worry about it? I have a tax ID / UTR by the way.