Living Abroad

NuttyNige

Although my wife and I are UK citizens we live in SA. My wife has recently come in to some money (£50,000 approx). Can we legally put it into a high interest savings account\or invest whilst living abroad???

:beer:

DocProc

Two quick questions immediately come to mind...

Do you also have a UK address?

Where do you send you tax return?

ioscorpio

My son lives in SA and he says the interest rate on savings is higher in Cape Town than it is in UK, so he moved his savings to his bank there.

I think you have to be UK resident to open a UK account, but if you had one already open, you can still use it. My son still has a Co-op bank account and they know that he now lives in SA. My son-in-law has a UK HSBC bank account from when he was a student here and they know he lives in Mexico now.

bigglesinc

Have you ever thought about investing it in property. Rental return is good.

arnold_2

In principle you can open UK accounts from overseas but mainly banks don't let you.

Those that do include HSBC, Citibank and Barclays.

Of those, the best is probably Citibank. Their Direct Current Account gives quite a reasonable rate of interest and more or less free access to the money worldwide.

SA may have restrictions about you having overseas accounts though.


Arnold

Cook_County

I am not certain why as a non-UK resident you would want cash onshore. You get much more flexibility tax-wise by holding the investment offshore so you can minimise your exposure to UK tax when you return to the UK.

You will in any case presumably be subject to SA tax on the interest whether or not in the UK; plus UK IHT on death.