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Standard Chartered Online Trading will not remove UK Stamp Duty on ETF

The options for Singaporeans to form a portfolio that is

  • diversified
  • low cost or cost effective
  • easy to managed long term
  • fundamentally sound
  • passively managed as opposed to active management

is difficult to carry out.

Unit Trusts and Exchange Traded Funds are standard ways to form that.

The problem with Unit Trust is that sales charge comes up to at least 1%, and their expense ratio at the lowest for passively managed is 0.95%, which is rather high. We are talking about the Infinity Global Stock Index Fund. You can read my write up over here.

There is a Global ETF listed on the SGX that satisfy for the above requirement. This is the MSCI WORLD Index UCITS ETF issued by Deutsche Wealth Management (Factsheet here). The expense ratio is half of the unit trust at 0.45%, there is no death or inheritance tax issue as opposed to investing in foreign exchanges. The problem with this ETF is that it is a synthetic ETF as oppose to a non-synthetic.

Synthetic means the ETF does not hold an actual basket of stocks but are holding derivative swaps. The fear is that there are counter party risks. (Read this for more explanation)

Such a shame. We almost have the perfect product.

One prospective country for us to purchase an ETF that enables you to invest in a basket of world stocks is the London Stock Exchange (LSE). There, you can purchase VWRL or Vanguard FTSE All-World UCITS ETF:

This Fund seeks to provide long-term growth of capital by tracking the performance of the FTSE All-World Index, a market-capitalisation weighted index of common stocks of large and mid cap companies in developed and emerging countries. The Fund employs a “passive management” – or indexing – investment approach, through physical acquisition of securities, designed to track the performance of the Index, a free float adjusted market capitalisation weighted index. The Fund will invest in a portfolio of equity securities that so far as possible and practicable consists of a representative sample of the component securities of the Index.

This ETF is widely diversified, low cost (0.25% expense ratio), non-synthetic, passively managed and managed by a very experience house famous for their passive index fund.

LSE makes a better place compare to NYSE (where its cousin the  Vanguard Total World Stock Market ETF VT is listed) due to its more favorable death tax situation.

If you add up your costs for investing which is commission/sales charges + expense ratio the locally listed DBXT MSCI World ETF makes the most sense.

VWRL is not bad if you use Standard Chartered Online Trading to purchase since they do not have minimum and your commission is only 0.25%. The problem is that for UK, they levied a 0.5% stamp duty on all purchase transaction.

That is a bummer. Here you can see a UK Stamp duty of $0.20 for 1 share purchase which equals 0.5%.

We got some good news that UK are removing this UK Stamp Duty so as to make UK a more conducive place versus Ireland for ETF.

Stamp duty on Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) is to be abolished from April 2014 in a bid to encourage more firms to domicile products in the UK.

The move is an attempt to bring the UK into line with other playing fields: though London is Europe’s biggest market for ETF trading, the vast majority of ETFs are domiciled offshore in order to avoid investors incurring the stamp duty.

I even wrote in to LSE to verified this. They say this is true but that this falls under the jurisdiction of the UK tax department more than them.

So why is SCB still making us pay this stamp duty?

Apparently, according to the SCB personnel who helped me checked, this removal of stamp duty is only applicable to UK domiciled folks and not to others (that includes you and me most likely).

Update 28th April 2014: According to reader MoMo who called in and check, there seem to be some good news. It would seem that  ETFs on LSE with ISIN starting with GB and IE are exempted from stamp duty.

The fees shown when placing order is only indicative. To look at the actual cost, you have to look at the contract note.

The two Vanguard All World ETF, one in GBP (VWRL) and USD (VWRD) are listed here as having ISIN code: IE00B3RBWM25 and IE00B3RBWM25 respectively. Which qualifies them to be exempted. I will have to test it out with a transaction myself.

Summary

This is rather anal and it seems that SCB doesn’t have much choices there. We as passive investors are running out of options.

When it comes to so many hurdles (inheritance tax, low cost fundamentally sound non synthetic diversified  fund) it looks like it is forcing us to form a portfolio with Infinity Global and the STI ETF.

The regulatory hurdles just makes overseas investing a big turn off to recommend to your less savvy friends.

You have a few options

  • Stick with higher cost but easy to manage: Infinity Global + STI ETF
  • Take the risk with counterparty risk: DBXT MSCI WORLD + STI ETF
  • Jump through more hoops: Venture to Canadian stock exchange (they don’t have death taxes) to form a portfolio (unfortunately they don’t have a all in one ETF) + STI ETF
  • Take the risk that US$60k and above you will be taxed 50%: VT (NYSE) + STI ETF(SGX)
  • Take the risk that GBP 325k (SG$700k) and above you will be taxed 40%, 0.5% more cost: VWRL (LSE) + STI ETF(SGX)
Kyith

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Alan

Saturday 15th of June 2019

Hello Kyith! This was a very helpful post, thank you! I am using SCB online trading and have been mystified with additional charges levied on my orders. Even though what I bought (IWDA:LSE) is domiciled in Ireland.

At least now I know where the extra charge came from (the UK Stamp Duty). Did you ever manage to get an answer from SCB?

Kyith

Saturday 15th of June 2019

no most of what I have posted, i have to test myself. I hope that does not turned you off from investing with them.

j

Sunday 9th of August 2015

"Take the risk that GBP 325k (SG$700k) and above you will be taxed 40%"

I suppose VWRL is "holdings in authorised unit trusts and open-ended investment companies (OEICs)" and therefore, for non-uk-domiciled person, not taxable under UK inheritance tax?

Kyith

Monday 10th of August 2015

hi j,

thanks for bringing this to my attention. from much of my read up after you brought this to my attention, it seems that OEIC is an investment asset much like unit trust on its own, and seems rather different from ETFs > http://monevator.com/etfs-vs-index-funds-differences/

Serendib

Thursday 1st of May 2014

Hi Drizzt, thanks for starting this discussion online - you and I have discussed the big difficulties a Singaporean/SG-based investor faces in trying to build a low-cost, tax-efficient, diversified portfolio. not providing tax advice here, but its important to keep in mind that witholding taxes can be reduced by taking advantage of DTAs (Double-Tax Avoidance Agreements). Singapore and US do not have a DTA, so a Singaporean/SG-based investor buying directly into US-listed ETF will be hit with 30% WHT on dividends, but if we were to buy a UK-listed/Irish-domiciled ETF (like VWRD) that holds US stocks, the withholding tax deducted by the US is only 15% due to the US-Ireland DTA. http://monevator.com/etfs-and-the-peculiar-effects-of-withholding-tax/

Furthermore, there is a UK-Singapore DTA, so those dividends from the UK-listed ETF do not incur any withholding taxes if they are sent to us in Singapore. http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/cnr/withholding-tax.pdf

I believe Canadian ETFs may provide similar benefits, but need to investigate further!

Kyith

Thursday 1st of May 2014

HI Serendib! thanks for highlighting that document. its been most helpful. i wonder how they know thatyou are a Singapore citizen. since for SCB trading we didnt really submit a W8Ben if i remember correctly. so this means that UK is viable (not sure about the inheritance tax)

seems Canada and swiss are viable places.

momo

Wednesday 30th of April 2014

Hi Drizzt, let me spin off another thought that I had some time back but did not investigate further. Is there any estate/inheritance tax or any other tax (capital gains tax?) if we Singaporeans buy Ireland-domiciled ETFs on the Swiss Exchange? Because if there is none, then another option is to get accumulating ETFs (no dividends) from the Swiss Exchange, for e.g. some iShares ETFs.

Kyith

Wednesday 30th of April 2014

Hi momo, interesting never thought of that. How does that stack up versus Canada without estate duty as well

momo

Monday 28th of April 2014

BTW, Drizzt, promote VWRD (USD) instead of VWRL (GBP) due to the more favourable exchange rate. You cannot view VWRD in stock quote but you can place order.

Nate

Tuesday 29th of April 2014

Hi momo, what do you mean by more favourable exchange rate? Is it on Vanguard's side or our side?

Kyith

Monday 28th of April 2014

hi momo! thanks for sharing! let me test this tonight. I will purchase a VWRD and see how it goes

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