Unless you are also unable to hold any type of fund or ETF in Schwab, not at all exactly the same.With all due respect, you have exactly the same options that I, as a US citizen had. At the time Vanguard froze my accounts due to my residency in a foreign country, I had one option - Schwab International.
And for that matter, what is to prevent Schwab from a similar policy change that would "restrict" or even summarily close, nonresident accounts? Schwab has apparently been fine up to now, but then the same can be said of Vanguard. Totally fine, until suddenly not.
Well, okay. However, you've already seen from your own experience how brittle, fragile, and uncertain it can be to hold US accounts as a non-US resident. The problem is just magnified for nonresident aliens. The combination of US (and non-US) nonresident alien tax rules and regulations and broker or platform "policy" can leave even less room for manoeuvre than that available to US citizens. As a Venn diagram, the intersection point of possibilities inside these two is becoming smaller each year.My comment was never about tax fairness and did not address the topic at all.
I'm finding it difficult to square that with what Vanguard have come out with so far. The true reason behind the lack of any form of clarity is far more likely to be because Vanguard has simply not thought it through at all. All of the "we'll update you as and when" responses to requests for information suggest strongly that they just do not yet have any plan beyond the vague intention that accounts will be "restricted".Vanguard isn't being clear about what will happen which may be a deliberate strategy to encourage people to move away so they reduce the cost to service those specialized and restricted (sales and withdrawals only) accounts, ...
From a user perspective, this lack of information is actually more damaging than if things were better solidified.
Statistics: Posted by TedSwippet — Thu Nov 28, 2024 7:54 am — Replies 156 — Views 15109