Funds

[thrilled]

I wire some money thru Schwab.It cost $25.Plus Kasikorn bank takes A little.I also 

bring $10,000 cash.And use Schwab ATM card.All ATM fees are reimbursed thru Schwab.

[Wake Up]

11 hours ago, bttao said:

I never paid attention to this FBAR thing ... I never heard of it either...

It's insane: 7 Pages to fill out for 10K... 10k?

I doubt if any Drug Dealer would have to worry about filling it out, or having banking accounts in his name or filing tax returns... they usually have surrogates to do the dirty wash for them.... 

As long as you don’t have a foreign bank account with a balance of 10,000 USA dollars (based on local currency) then you don’t have to fill out the FBAR.  The balance only needs to be 10,000 for one day in the calendar year to require you to file FBAR. The FBAR online form is easier to fill out  than it appears.  If you knowingly fail to complete the FBAR yearly then you are probably ok until you are not.  The government is lenient when you file late and even if your excuse is I did not know. But failure to file for many years makes the risk to you more if you are caught because you also must state on your IRS form that you complied with the yearly FBAR online filing so you have a FBAR homeland security issue and filing a wrong tax return issue.  You must also declare as income to the IRS on your return for any interest earned on your foreign bank account. It is taxable. Not trying to say this is a big deal but I try to comply with all USA laws and if you have substantial money 100,000 K or more in a foreign bank account I would not risk not filing FBAR and proper tax return.  

[Wake Up]

8 hours ago, thrilled said:

I wire some money thru Schwab.It cost $25.Plus Kasikorn bank takes A little.I also 

bring $10,000 cash.And use Schwab ATM card.All ATM fees are reimbursed thru Schwab.

You are smart. Personally unless you have a JP Morgan Chase privileged banking relationship or something similar I don’t know why every USA expat does not have a Charles Schwab account with free ATM card and a Capital One 1.5 percent rebate no foreign transaction credit card. 

[rickudon]

If from the UK, TT rates for GBP are pretty poor these days. For monthly pension transfers, i just use my credit card (no fee other than MC exchange rate and Thai ATM fee). It works out cheaper to pay the Thai ATM fee as the exchange rate is so much higher. Just worked out how much to transfer via swift 4000 GBP and it was cheaper to use the ATM 8 times to get the money (it ended up about 1000 baht more). And i didn't even count the Thai banks 0.25% fee for changing the money. Also, with the ATM, i can get the money whenever i want at short notice, not just once.

[bttao]

10 hours ago, Wake Up said:

You are smart. Personally unless you have a JP Morgan Chase privileged banking relationship or something similar I don’t know why every USA expat does not have a Charles Schwab account with free ATM card and a Capital One 1.5 percent rebate no foreign transaction credit card. 

.

What is  "JP Morgan Chase privileged banking relationship".

 

I hate that bank ( even though I opened recently a savings account  for $15 K with a  $200 bonus (and 0.001% interest) after 90 days; and count on closing it after 6 months (if closed before 180d they will take the $200 back).

 

They have a FEE for every little service... and they may add one for sneezing.

They may charge me a fee when I close my account, and ask for a check.... or will i have to carry it all in cash? 

I read horror stories  about their blocked CC in Thailand and elsewhere, leaving people stranded with no cash.

Edited November 21, 2017 by bttao

[bttao]

10 hours ago, Wake Up said:

As long as you don’t have a foreign bank account with a balance of 10,000 USA dollars (based on local currency) then you don’t have to fill out the FBAR.  The balance only needs to be 10,000 for one day in the calendar year to require you to file FBAR. The FBAR online form is easier to fill out  than it appears.  If you knowingly fail to complete the FBAR yearly then you are probably ok until you are not.  The government is lenient when you file late and even if your excuse is I did not know. But failure to file for many years makes the risk to you more if you are caught because you also must state on your IRS form that you complied with the yearly FBAR online filing so you have a FBAR homeland security issue and filing a wrong tax return issue.  You must also declare as income to the IRS on your return for any interest earned on your foreign bank account. It is taxable. Not trying to say this is a big deal but I try to comply with all USA laws and if you have substantial money 100,000 K or more in a foreign bank account I would not risk not filing FBAR and proper tax return.  

 

I did not say I had /have a Foreign Bank Account..  Just that I never heard of FBAR;  just noticed the line on IRS  Returns about the $10 K.

[Direktkaoz]

The cheapest and fastest way to transfer money from abroad would actually be through the use of blockchain technology. You can create an account on bx.in.th and link your thai bank account there. You can purchase Litecoin using USD from coinbase and wire it over to the bx.in.th wallet. The wire usually takes 5 minutes. You then sell the LTC that you received on the Thai exchange for THB and withdraw it to your Thai bank account. Using this method you can send as little as you want or as much as you want and only incur about 50 cents in fees for the transfer. You may incur fees when purchasing Litecoin on coinbase but you can avoid this entirely by just using gdax and setting limit buy orders which has 0 fees. (Reason I say Litecoin and not Bitcoin is that Bitcoin fees are very high)

[lopburi3]

On 11/21/2017 at 3:35 PM, Wake Up said:

As long as you don’t have a foreign bank account with a balance of 10,000 USA dollars (based on local currency) then you don’t have to fill out the FBAR.  The balance only needs to be 10,000 for one day in the calendar year to require you to file FBAR. The FBAR online form is easier to fill out  than it appears.  If you knowingly fail to complete the FBAR yearly then you are probably ok until you are not.  The government is lenient when you file late and even if your excuse is I did not know. But failure to file for many years makes the risk to you more if you are caught because you also must state on your IRS form that you complied with the yearly FBAR online filing so you have a FBAR homeland security issue and filing a wrong tax return issue.  You must also declare as income to the IRS on your return for any interest earned on your foreign bank account. It is taxable. Not trying to say this is a big deal but I try to comply with all USA laws and if you have substantial money 100,000 K or more in a foreign bank account I would not risk not filing FBAR and proper tax return.  

There is also a 10k domestic money laundering regulation and that has nothing to do with FBAR or overseas.  When I lived in South Florida 25 years ago all transactions over 4k were subject to this oversight.