'Initial Investment' amounts and buying Shares

bowlhead99

reaprr wrote: »

I would like to buy some Google/Apple shares specifically rather than invest in 'technology' as a whole. I wasn't aware of any USA tax issues though, does it matter if they are within an ISA?

The U.S. will charge a withholding tax as they kick dividends out the door to overseas investors. If you fill out the right W8-BEN form and pass to your broker /platform, the withholding tax drops down to the UK-US tax treaty rate of 'only' 15%.

The special tax status of S&S ISAs means you don't pay uk tax to HMRC on profits within. That doesn't mean that the US IRS will recognise that status or consider them as tax free for its own purposes, as if it were something it properly understood to be tax free like a U.S.retirement scheme, and give you the tax back that it withheld as standard. And HMRC are not going to give you back anything withheld because you are doing it in an opaque wrapper where they can't see your activities and they did not withhold from you at all anyway.

At the moment the main U.S.tech shares I hold directly in small doses are things like Amazon or Yelp which are not paying divs anyway, so I haven't bothered wrapping them, I just hope to have their eventual gains to use up spare CGT allowance. So the point is moot.

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Google share price is $576. So small top ups aren't going to be enough.

That's a good point. One of my trading accounts has a couple thousand dollars of AMZN shares in it but is only like 6 actual shares. Topping up with £200 here or £300 there would not be very efficient, considering dealing charges and the fact that you might only afford 1 share and leave an unnecessary pile of unspent cash on the side.

reaprr

Thank you bowlhead, a very thorough answer! I think I will go with the suggestions and fill up my ISA allowance with funds (which should take me a while!) before I get involved in American shares.

I appreciate the help everyone - I'm sure I'll be back before too long with more questions!