moving savings when emigrating

macmomo

I am emigrating (well returning to Australia after 25 years in the UK) with my spouse and hopefully 2 small children (second one on the way) in early-mid 2014. Spouse has a full time job waiting for him there.

We have a house to sell which is currently rented out but market value about £150,000; the mortgage on it is about £100,000 so we can estimate getting £50,000 profit from the sale.

We have additional savings of about £100,000 in cash (currently offsetting mortgage), about £50,000 in ISAs (mix of stocks and shares, fidelity funds and cash) and £15,000 in an NS&I bond which shouldn't be cashed before next August. I will also get a terminal bonus of around £30,000 tax free in May 2014 on leaving my employment in the UK.

I am after advice on how and when to cash in the ISAs - do we need to deconflict with the house sale for capital gains tax? And then also how does one move that amount of cash over to aussie dollars - presumably not all at once? From the above figures it looks like we'll have around £250,000 to transfer once everything is cashed in and sold.

This is our nest egg for the future and the result of many years of us both working very long hours and scrooge-like living, so I'm terrified of messing up the process of moving it. I have no job to go to yet in Australia so may end up unemployed or need to use this money to buy a house, car and possibly set myself up as self-employed. Any advice will be very welcome.

xylophone

No CGT on ISAs.
Re CGT and house. http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/moneytaxandbenefits/taxes/taxonpropertyandrentalincome/dg_4020890
https://www.commbankuk.co.uk/?gclid=CKDGtpX5wbACFQwjfAodQhUKYg

Cook_County

xylophone wrote: »

No CGT on ISAs.
Re CGT and house. http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/moneytaxandbenefits/taxes/taxonpropertyandrentalincome/dg_4020890
https://www.commbankuk.co.uk/?gclid=CKDGtpX5wbACFQwjfAodQhUKYg

This is irrelevant. Australia will tax the ISAs, the N S & I bonds etc once Australian resident.

Have you any pension plans to move to a QROPS?

xylophone

Australia will tax the ISAs, the N S & I bonds etc once Australian resident.

I thought that the OP was cashing in all investments before departing?
The NS&I is to be cashed Aug 2013 and the OP is departing in 2014?
The house is to be sold before departure.
The OP will receive a cash bonus on quitting UK employment before departure.
Therefore the OP will have only cash to transmit to Australian bank account?

macmomo

yes, the idea was to cash it all in before leaving as I could see no benefit to leaving it here as I would have to pay tax on all of it.

I will have a UK govt pension of approx £10,000 (which is then taxed) payable from mid-2014.

My main concern is just the mechanics of moving such a large sum of money. Do you do it all in one transaction to get the best exchange rate or do you do it in say £20k per month chunks so as to spread the risk of exchange rate variation?

macmomo

And with the fidelity funds etc can you just cash in some at a time or is there a penalty each time you make a transaction? I had a look on their website but found it a little confusing (although perhaps it was me being unintelligent).

macmomo

little bump! - anyone with wise words?

wriggly

macmomo wrote: »

My main concern is just the mechanics of moving such a large sum of money. Do you do it all in one transaction to get the best exchange rate or do you do it in say £20k per month chunks so as to spread the risk of exchange rate variation?

I would do it in several chunks, just to minimise the chance of regret if the pound rises against the Aussie. The Aussie hit an all time high against the pound earlier this year, but has been heading back down again.

It's hard to beat the exchange rate at http://www.currencyfair.com/ but I'd only feel comfortable giving them about £25000 at a time. You can exchange and transfer that amount in less than a week, though, so you could still do the lot quickly if you wanted.