I'm currently sitting on a large capital gain in my general investment account that I stupidly invested in my own name even though I am the sole earner.
I realized later on that we would be in a much better financial position if my wife invested these funds instead as she is in a lower tax band.I'm moving from the USA to the UK in April as well, and there you can't file jointly and share allowances.
If she owned this gain, the tax rate would only be 10%, for me it's 28%. It's worse for dividends.
Both in the UK and in the USA there are laws that allow you to transfer or 'gift' stock to your spouse and pass the capital gains on to them. Although I'm struggling to figure out how to do this.
I contacted IBKR and they're saying that they don't allow the transfer of stock to someone with a different name unless it's a joint account.Has anyone got around this?
I assume if I sell everything and transfer the cash, buy it again, that won't count as a 'gift' and I'll be liable to pay?
Should I instead open a joint account, transfer to that, and then try and transfer it to her individual account? Or should I look for a new brokerage that supports this type of transfer?
original posted by slike101 to r/personalfinance on Mon, 04 Mar 2024 19:55:30 GMT.