More on Withholding Tax

Investmentmoats published an article about Withholding tax, here is some extra info not covered by the article.

For Singapore investors, I'm sharing some withholding tax knowledge that I have acquired (I'm not sharing my actual experience, and I cannot speak for investors from other countries):

(1) There is a difference between Shell-A and Shell-B, both listed on LSE and available as ADR. Singapore investors buying Shell-B pay ZERO withholding. Similarly, there is more than 1 BHP counter, and one of them has ZERO withholding, the other you pay the ozzie withholding. 

 (2) Australia withholding has the complicated franking credits. If you are an individual stock investor, you are unlikely to get the benefits of these credits, but somehow the ASX listed ETFs are able to do some tax magic and use these credits, so your effective dividend withholding becomes less than 15% when you invest via ETF. 

 (3) Spanish shares – zero withholding for scrip dividend (always choose scrip dividend where available). (4) technically, US listed bond ETFs purchased by foreigners should also be liable for zero withholding on ‘dividends as these ‘dividends’ are actually interest payments’, but you have to do the tax reclaim yourself because the ETF doesn’t declare it as qualified income for you. But I’ve never seen anyone successfully do this individually. Another blogger posted something recently about stashaway doing a tax reclaim on US-listed bond ETF withholding tax and refunding it to the blogger. 

 (4) Irish domiciled US corporate Bond ETFs pay ZERO withholding tax (see their annual report) 

August: 2 day drop then recovery?

8/9 August: 2 day dip after the tariff threat but even without any announcement the markets recovered by themselves. Whether it is a temporary pause before the downturn continues remains to be seen but as I type this on National Day morning, ASX 200 is +0.23%% and Nikkei +0.85%. Spent about $15k this month already. Looking to deploy $5k more then I'm done.

Shell price is quite weak despite the recovery by the markets. I have only held a tiny position in Shell after the GFC and always wanted to increase my holdings but its price really ran away. This looks like a good opportunity to build up my Shell holdings.

Strategy: August 2019

More trade war fears with new China tariffs scheduled to take effect on 1 September 2019. Fed cut rates by 0.25%.

The likelihood of a Hard Brexit with no-deal appears to have increased and many of my UK counters are affected and so has the pound. 

I took this opportunity to buy a little more of each of my counters LLOY, AV, SAN, ING, VOD, BT, RDSB.

Hope to be able to buy more shares and average down next week 5 August.

Dividends Collected: July 2019

A quiet month for Singapore dividends, but collected A$, US$, GBP, HK$ dividends from various counters. 

Dividend also include the first coupon payment for my Singapore Savings Bonds. I should have bought more SSBs when the average interest rate was above 2.5%, but I was keeping my warchest for a crash....