Foreign Income and self assessment

Confusedbyselfassessment

Dear Forumites  
I am not actually trying to "cut" tax but did not know where else to post this!  I would be quite happy to pay the appropriate amount of tax, but am unsure about how to put this on the self assessment form.

Fully appreciate no one can give me advice!  I have actually tried to register myself on the HMRC community forum but it would not let me and when I tried to report a technical fault the system appeared to crash!

My question is this - I inherited some money in Germany.  Some of this is invested in investments funds and some is in a savings account, generating interest.  I believe I need to report the savings interest in the "foreign" section of my self assessment tax return.  I am unclear however about the "dividend income". HMRC's video on foreign income appears to indicate that I need to declare dividend income  as well.  However, the funds that i am investing in are not paying out the dividends, they are reinvested.  Do I need to declare them regardless?  I am not using any of that money (savings interests or any investment gains)  in any way at the moment, it's simply there and I hope is growing a bit.  

Brie

I was told that foreign income only needs to be reported when it is brought to the UK or otherwise used in the country where it "lives".  Something to do with the fact that how do you know how much to report until you can convert it to GBP.  For reinvested dividends I would have suspected that you don't have any money until the shares become cash (& converted to GBP) as they may end up being zero value if the shares take a dive.

Bookworm105

Brie said:

 For reinvested dividends I would have suspected that you don't have any money until the shares become cash (& converted to GBP) as they may end up being zero value if the shares take a dive.

sorry but as a blanket statement that is just totally wrong
the dividend is the item being taxed, not what that money is spent on (reinvestment in more shares).