Voy a poner en texto todo lo que ha escrito el Terrible-Counter-624 afectado, así queda en el hilo y accesible dentro de búsqueda.
" Hello,
I’ll keep this one as-to-the-point-as-possible and make a proper post of the full experience later so others can learn and avoid the same mistakes, but for now I’m looking for help.
The situation:
My father passed away early last year (Belgian citizen like my mom and me) and has always invested a lot and with great intrest, we’re talking daily 1-2 hours of stock markets, research, newspapers, magazines, … in his spare time for as long as I can remember.
The investments I’m talking about here were all done with Lynx (Interactive Brokers, IB) over the last decade or so.
After his passing, we fixed and paid the Belgian ‘inheritance tax’, but received a message from Lynx that IB has blocked ALL funds and assets with my dads name on it (spread over his personal Lynx account and a mutual one with my mom, totaling around 400k EUR.)
It seems that the USA has a rule that forces you to pay tax (called ‘estate tax’, their version of our inheritance tax) on American assets above 60k USD.
Now, for our beloved ETFs this is irrelevant as they’re based mostly in Ireland, but after consulting with a financial lawyer and taking a closer look at the investments, it seems my dad had well over 300K USD of American stock.
Now the past 8 months have been an absolute shitshow trying to fix this for me.
- After the lawyer did his calculations, we filed the required ‘form 706-NA’ via post (only option) with an estimated 68K in estate tax to be paid. No further advice or anything, just wait for the response and pay when you are invited to do so.
- Months of silence untill we received a letter on 11/06/2024 (sent 20/05/2024) stating we actually owe 98K+ in tax, and are now also being charged 2K ‘fee for not paying’ (it seems we had to spontaneously pay along with filing the 706-NA) and are already above 3K in intrest on top.
Due date for the document and the payment was 9 months after the death date, we are now at 15 months.
Total amount in the letter had to be paid before 04/06/2024 or the intrest increases further.
Payment options listed: check or money order.
Thankfully, the IRS website lists an alternative, an international wire transfer with a same day payment requirement. (Foreign electronic payments – Tax type codes | Internal Revenue Service)
-I’ve called them (which was also pure chaos) to get an updated amount and avoid pingponging with payment dates in the past and intrest demands that never arrive on time via post, and have received a figure valid untill 30/06/2024.
Now we’ve reached the point where I desperately need help, hoping one of you has experience or knowledge I can’t seem to find. How do we, as Belgian citizens get 100k+ EUR in a same day wire transfer to the IRS account.
- Argenta (my moms bank) is unable to do this payment since 2022.
- Axa (my bank) was baffled and is most likely unable to do this payment as well.
- Wise.com is unable to guarantee a same day payment and has no option to send this payment from a US based bank to the IRS (the only way to guarantee it arriving same day before 17pm local time, which is a clearly stated requirement at the risk of payment rejection)
- I’ve had the advice to contact the fiscal lawyer again, but he works for a Belgian accounting firm and I wasn’t too happy with his calculation mistake either (or his advice to wait for a response), let alone we want to transfer them 100K+ EUR in an account we can no longer access in the hope they do it right before the end of the month.
- I have no idea where to go or who to contact, other than calling BNY Mellon / HSBC on monday, but I highly doubt they will receive us and do the payment ‘just like that’ (even for a fee)
Only thing I could still think of is just going to every banks head office (starting with ING & Deutsche Bank) and asking them if they can do the transfer if we start an account at their bank.This absolutely has to be done (= arrived at the IRS before 30/06/2024) to avoid yet another increase in intrest, because at 8%, it goes up ridiculously fast.
Any advice or experience would be wildly appreciated.
(and for the love of GOD, DO NOT INVEST MORE THAN 60K USD DIRECTLY IN AMERICAN STOCK USING A SINGLE BROKER)"
[…]
Just a small heads up. I’ve made a degiro account for monthly ETF investing recently and in the sign up process it states they are a qualified intermediary for the IRS. I’m not 100 percent sure what the consequences are in detail, but there is a reasonable chance that degiro does report US holdings on an estate like this to the IRS. Unable to tell you whether or not they would freeze the assets. I guess degiro is more commonly used here, so thought I would share that as well.
[…]
"Thanks man, I will wait for the reclaiming of the Belgian tax to be finalized as well to make a post.
Disclosing the account info would not have changed much in this situation really, it would have sped things with the notary up just slightly, but everything else would still be the same I believe.
I think it’s more important to thoroughly investigate what exactly is going to happen in case something bad happens and how you can improve or avoid the unpleasantries as much as possible in advance.
Testament, fiscal optimization by splitting it over you and your spouse, sneaky little tricks (like splitting it over multiple brokers and keeping them all below 60K USD), frequent portfolio rebalancing, …
My post will mostly be ‘the trouble we ran into’ and unfortunately less ‘solutions’ or ‘smarter alternatives’ as I simply don’t know how to do all of it better."
[…]
"YOU are the person that I need!
What do you say when you want to do a transfer like this or who/what department do you contact and how?
What info or paper do you provide for them to initiate the transfer?
Do they work with a US based ING branch or is it a different bank?
Are they always wildly obsessed with the source and destination of the transfer?
I walked into a BE branch today and they acted as if I was talking chinese.
I kept pushing and pushing and we are now in the process of being checked as customers, although I am 99 percent sure they misunderstood me still, despite presenting them with concrete info and a crystal clear explanation.
The mountain of documentation we are being asked to provide is simply monumental, I have been writing an email for the last 5 hours (no joke) and I am up to 21 attachments (also no joke). Almost done.
My head is going to explode into a fiery ball of anger and frustration soon."
[…]
"I don’t see the issue either, but hot damn the people at ING don’t agree.
25 minutes of explaining the situation to essentially everyone in that office.
WE OPEN ACCOUNT. WE TRANSFER MONEY TO US. YES?
Woman couldn’t think outside of SEPA it seems. ‘yeah when we do it to France it arrives the next day already’ … … …
Then we get a call a few hours later they want details and proof of everything, and I mean everything.
Proof of previous employment of both my parents, proof of the investments being reported and paid in BE inheritance tax, proof that the dividends were reported in the yearly tax reports, proof of e-mails with lawyer, notary, Lynx and IB, … Just about everything they could think of.
“to verify the account and the moneys origin and destination”
HOMBRE, IM PAYING TO TO A WELL KNOWN FEDERAL TAX INSTITUTION, this is not how fraud or shady business works, we would be horrible criminals wiring 100k to the US government right?
Right now, waiting for them to dig through the mountain of documentation I’ve provided them and to get a confirmation they are willing and able to do the transfer.
But thanks a lot for the tips, I’ll put them to work"
[…]
"Right. Should have made this post sooner to get info like this.
We did tell the whole story in the hope of talking to someone with knowledge on short notice and without appointment. It is what it is now, but that’s another good tip I’ll put in my final report of the whole situation.
We went with ING, today they confirmed to my mom they can do it and they’ve processed all documents, but the woman we dealt with wants me to call her tomorrow to still talk about 2 things.
One of which is the transfer itself (seems they are still struggling with the same day transfer concept, I’m curious what sort of intermediate bank or branch they use in the US), I’m hoping to get an idea of their fees and exchange rate markup here as well, the other being ‘the repatriation’ of the money once it has been released and stocks have been sold (her words).
I have no clue what she means by this, despite all the explaining and provided documents (including e-mails with Lynx and IB) she might think the stock is being held in the US?
IB will transfer everything in stocks/cash as is to my moms account once we deliver the doc from IRS and we will regain access. Done. If and when we sell, we can just transfer the money to her bank account same as always as far as I know.
Anyway, thanks a bunch for the help and tips man !"
[…]
"Anyway, still not done.
They force you to do it from your homebanking but…
ING doesn’t allow you to enter the ABA/routing number of the institution you are wiring to, only the BIC…
The IRS does not have a BIC, only an ABA/RTN number.
What is simply unbelievable is this website from ING NL
https://www.ing.nl/particulier/betalen/buitenland/buitenland-betaling-uitleg-per-land-verenigdestaten explains it crystal clear, but in Belgium even their specialized ‘payment department’ (not reachable by phone even within ING btw) seems to have no clue what’s what.
I’ve sent them another e-mail explaining everything and pointing out the shortcomings in the method available.
If I don’t have a solution from them on monday, we’re cancelling the account and going to KBC.
Today, as I was on the phone with the lady that received us on Monday, she also went on about the ‘repatriation of the stocks or money back to Belgium’ and what a huge problem this would be, even to the point where they were already refusing to do it and sending us back to Argenta for that.
We’ll just sell via Lynx, reinvest a part (at least to be under 60K usd ASAP) and cash out a part (bit by bit) back to the Belgian bank account all the money came from in the first place. I don’t see the problem, she saw only problem somehow.
shitshow"
[…]
"Just a small one:
ING’s amateurism really showed in this process.
For a week, we went back and forth with their payment and verification division without ever talking to someone knowledgeable directly, all happened through the random employee working in the office we opened an account in (and her department was actually investments).
It concluded with the following message coming from ING’s ‘payments’ division:
“We can not perform this transaction without an IBAN, no bank in Belgium can do that”
They also started a huge hassle over ‘the repatriation of the stocks and funds’ as they called it, where that is completely irrelevant (as I explained to the contact 3 times over 15 minutes).
Extremely frustrating interactions. So we are cancelling all accounts at ING and have opened one at Belfius, wire transfer should be initiated tomorrow or day after.
Due to missing our deadline of June 30 (where the amount of intrest would change), I have contacted the IRS again over the phone.
First one refused to talk to me as I am not the executor of the estate, he was willing to provide a translator (I am not kidding) or I had to mail/fax over a bunch of documents to confirm I was allowed to speak on my mothers behalf, an absolute joke.
So I called back the next day and fixed it with a little handiness, received an updated amount valid untill July 14 (that is somehow lower than the one untill June 30).
Fingers crossed for a smooth transfer with Belfius and then on to the certificate
and the Belgian tax reclaim"
[…]
"We are still not sure. ING failed miserably and provided wrong information Belfius took some time and then got the wire details wrong (after I wrote an email in NL+ENG with all details spelled out point per point but the wire transfer looks so unusual they changed it) . After that their fraud department flagged it and stopped it. Called IRS again to confirm the exact form, took it up with bank branch manager directly and it was signed off by my mom 8 days ago. I called the IRS yesterday (which is a giant joke on a whole different level, but I’ll get to that in a later post when we no longer need their assistance whatsoever) and after being on hold for 58 minutes for calling 1 minute late, I was informed their system processes payments on a 2 week rotation, so they could not yet confirm the payment on the account. Have to call back next week. The money is still gone from our account, so that’s looking okay thus far. "
[…]
"I’ve left out several steps, additional pieces of information and events as they are irrelevant to the help I need at the moment. Like I said, when all is said, done, paid and freed up, I will make a big proper post detailing the full process so others can avoid our mistakes or do better.
Of all the people I have talked to regarding this (investors, folks at Lynx, IB, banks, financial advisors, fiscal lawyers, accountants and bookkeepers, people at Wise & the IRS over the phone, the belgian tax service, …) NOBODY was able to properly help.
Everyone had to guess or admit they had absolutely no clue.
The IRS website, communication channels and payment system are not designed for foreigners in any way, so with this being my only trustworthy source of information, I’ve been cursing the universe more than once."
[…]
"My man you have no idea.
My dad clearly didn’t know about it (we’re talking 30 percent on whatever you own in the US here, he would have never willingly given that up), our notary didn’t know about it, our contact at Lynx barely knew about it -only what IB tells him-, accountants, fiscal lawyers, other investors and financial people and advisors we’ve spoken to, the belgian tax service, the IRS themselves (literally at the number provided in the letter), NOBODY knew or knows.
But look it up and sure enough, it’s true.
What I’ve received from Lynx (in dutch)
"Indien op de dag van overlijden de waarde van de overleden rekening op Amerikaanse activa waarbij de emittent een Amerikaanse entiteit of overheid is, meer dan 60.000 USD bedraagt, hebben de erfgenamen volgens de regelgeving verplichtingen bij de IRS.
Als de overledene meer dan dit bedrag had, moet u formulier 706-NA invullen en een belastingcertificaat van de IRS verkrijgen."
Untill you provide Lynx (but really IB) with this certificate, your account is tradelocked by them.
With approval of all heirs, they are willing to sell certain assets, but the cash stays locked all the same.
This means US government bonds, Microsoft, Tesla, Nvidia, Alphabet, …, any american based stock or fund really.
He owned a handful of S&P500 picks, some US based ETFs, some BRK B, oil and energy, a whole bunch of battery/semiconductor/gold-silver companies and funds …
It adds up fast really if you’re not focused on EU based accumulating ETFs like most here are.
What you need to look at in Lynx is the security ID/ ISIN code. If it starts with US, its based there (makes sense).
If you have less than 100k in investments and invest more safe like me and a lot of people here, its not gonna be an issue.
But their house was paid off since over a decade and he had been investing since before I was born, so it really added up. On top of that, the US and the dollar seemed to be very interesting markets for him in the last decade.
Like I said, I promise I’ll make a full post about this later, I probably won’t be able to help many people here though (a lot of smart long term investing with reduced risk, like the ETFs I invest in as well)
But your heirs could just be the unlucky ones getting your initial 10k worth of nvidia, alphabet and meta now worth just over 60k and bam, screwed. (they won’t owe a lot though)
But if your initial was 100k and we’re now talking 900 K, hot damn they’re screwed.
(Thanks to life insurance, we’re lucky enough to be able to afford the estate tax without needing the blocked assets to be freed first as well.)"
[…]
"Honestly, I’m not on this reddit enough to know what amounts people have at their disposal and where they put it all exactly.
My dad recommended us all IWDA and in my research I came across this forum.
The US assets of EU based ETFs do not matter at all, you could have 10M+ in a EU based nasdaq/tech/defense fund and not owe anything to the US despite 95+ percent of your money actually being tied to them/invested in them indirectly, which is why it’s SO stupid to me
We contacted the banks and institutions we knew of and informed them (as is your legal obligation as heirs in BE), everything gets locked and passed to the notary who makes the list of debts and assets while determining the legal heirs and what nots.
I knew he invested, but honestly had no clue what, where or how.
Eventually, the notary found a short 7 digit account number linked to deposits on a german bank account we could not place, and a lot of effort later, we discovered these were deposits for his investment account at Lynx.
So while we technically still had full access at this point, it was against the law (under threat of serious fines and I believe even criminal charges in BE) to do any withdrawals at this point (transactions like selling assets I am not sure of, but feels to be under the same category if you think of the spirit of the law).
So you inform them (Lynx) of the death all the same, and it also gets frozen untill the estate is settled.
Then Lynx is provided with the death certificate and they provide the notary with the value at D0, M+1 and M+2 to decide which is the lowest value to take for the inheritance numbers.
A few months later Lynx is provided with the notarial decree (de akte?) and after all heirs sign off, the account is unblocked and divided according to the akte.
Except it never got unblocked because IB saw it clearly had more than 60K of US assets.
The only way out I saw for us (and this is in hindsight and in our specific situation) is that my dad should have sold +85% of his investments untill the US part was below 60K, transfered the money to my mom, to instantly buy it all again. All fees would have been lost ofcourse (but peanuts compared to the 100K we owe now), belgian inheritance tax would have remained the same as they were married with the common property regulation, but it would have resulted in 0 US tax owed at the time of his death. Without any evasion involved as for BE their mutual funds did not change and the US only cares about death date situation.
Alternatively yes, we could have sold everything and cashed it to my moms account (since we did find the login and password) before informing Lynx, but the shitstorm you could get from the belgian tax service alone would be insane.
This means illegally transferring 400k+ knowingly and willingly after the death of a loved one (and at this point, you’re not thinking about this stuff either btw).
Eventually Lynx and IB would discover your attempted tax evasion all the same (since they have to be informed of the death, if not by the heirs then by the notary) and I can’t tell you what it would mean for the IRS debt owed, but I can’t imagine that would be better than the shitshow we’re in today.
A third option I see looking back is dividing your investments in US assets over multiple brokers.
Any broker that manages less than 60K in US assets can accept a declaration from the heirs stating he did not own over 60K us assets, no certificate needed.
We were informed, but obviously not given this option as IB was used for and aware of the full 300K+ US part of his assets, they did not have much choice either I guess.
Or find a broker that doesn’t give a hoot and just accepts your declaration of “it wasn’t 60K” despite them well over that amount. Slim pickings, if any, I imagine.
Even though Belgium is not in a tax treaty with the US, I have been informed that after all the american stuff is said and done, we can reclaim part of our belgian inheritance tax. Vague info, but it seems to check out.
This is not clear cut law though, its a verdict from the Belgian constitutional court, so it absolutely has legal power.
This is another process I am absolutely dreading to go through, but obviously I will."
[…]
“Well the Belgian tax is already paid ofcourse, on the full amount.
What we can and will do later (when all is settled in US and proper documentation has been provided by the IRS) is reclaim the belgian inheritance tax on that part of the investments.”
[…]
“ING, BNP, KBC and Belfius and Deutsche Bank are getting a visit tomorrow untill we hear a ‘yes we can’.
If all head offices say no to the request (unlikely, but at this point I’m preparing for a never ending stream of struggle), we will contact HSBC, BNY, Bank of America, …
Fingers crossed for a quick yes once we get out of the little leagues.”
[…]
“This is federal. They don’t even accept credit cards for this type of tax payment unless you make an account (which requires receiving a PIN via post, so not an option).”
[…]
“Honestly, I don’t know why the IRS refuses transfers that are not same day or arriving after 17pm local time
thats why I linked the page of the IRS, it’s not my choice whatsoever
KBC’s instant transfers are Belgian, European at best.
This is US, no IBAN or anything like that. It’s with an ABA/routing number, which I have 0 experience with.
From what I understand, you need your local bank to work with an international bank (possible even working with a local US bank), all taking fees in the process
and there’s conversion rates from EUR to DOLLAR as well.
All we want is that X amount arrives at this party in this specific way”
[…]
"Yes, they list a check and money order as paying options in the letter
However…
Their letter took 20+ days to arrive, a check won’t arrive in time either, and right now we’re looking at 3k getting added in intrest from may 20 untill june 30.
Which means we will owe more money at that point, which takes weeks again to communicate, and the circle starts again and we will owe intrest on the intrest. So check is no option.
We checked with wise (I called), but considering the large amount it would take extra verification up to a few days, and their system can not do same day transfers, it might work or it might not
Between 1 and 4 business days they told me. And if it gets bounced, their system just tries again next day.
Again, timepressure. Between getting a new account verified and loaded with 100+K USD, a few failed transfers and getting the money back on our bank account, we will have missed the june 30 deadline.
I honestly don’t think they accept cash either, haven’t seen it listed anywhere
I’ve called them and asked if they accept credit card, we have an AMEX in our close circle without limit, but its not possible.
So I simply HAVE to find a way to do this wire transfer on their terms.
I can not possibly be the first belgian to encounter this issue.
For now we’re going ING first
Then Deutsche bank
Then Belfius/BNP/KBC
Then I’ll call BNY Mellon, HSBC and Bank of America (who all have a unit in Brussels)
I just posted here in the hopes of getting a
“i’ve had this too, XXX is how I did it and it worked”
But thanks for the tips !"
[…]
"ING allows you to do your own transfer internationally (as in, they tell you to do it yourself)
and it requires an IBAN or similar account number
WHICH DOESNT EXIST
They’re gonna get a very angry call tomorrow if they don’t put me through to someone who actually knows what they’re talking about because hot damn I’m getting pissed.
I provided them the payment document day 1, along with all other documents they required via mail, added the link from the IRS website and again all the details listed in a separate document.
And then I ended my mail with the summary that I need them to do a international wire transfer to this specific routing/ABA number - this specific account number (which is a combination of letters and numbers) in the US, in dollars.
And their response after 3 days is essentially ‘do it yourself’
in a place where it’s impossible to do it yourself.
un be lievable
And I’m not even talking about the 10 minutes on the phone where she kept blabbing about the difficulty of repatriation of the stocks to our Belgium accounts. (??)
I shut her down 5 times because she didn’t seem to have a clue what she was talking about, but she kept going.
Come on universe, I just need a tiny bit of help here"
[…]
"We decided to consult a fiscal lawyer to draft the 706-NA as we had nobody else to turn to and 0 knowledge in the matter. I could not find a guide or guidelines anywhere, or at least I did not know where to begin looking.
I had never heard of an ISIN code at the time, so I had no clue which stock was US based and which one wasnt.
Notaries were no help whatsoever outside of Belgian obligations, Lynx and IB the same, an accountant friend could not help us either and advised to consult a specialist.
Revolut is not US based either, the final wire (from bank to IRS) must happen by a US based bank, so we need our Belgian bank to use an international bank with a US branch or get a bank that has their own US branch.
It’s stated in the link provided in the original post (click on the same day taxpayer payment worksheet link from there to read more specifics.)
Behind Lynx, its Interactive Brokers handling your portfolio and they are the ones that said ‘this portfolio is over 60K USD, they owe taxes so we will keep it frozen’, Lynx just passed the message to us."
[…]
"The US estate tax on assets above 60k is not unknown.
Here is some info: Non-US investor's guide to navigating US tax traps - Bogleheads? Q9 and A4
OP, you might try to post in the forum of the Bogleheads: Non-US Investing - Bogleheads.org
There are many, very knowledgeable, and helpfull people on this forum."
[…]
"It was unfortunately unknown to all of us -including my dad- and to nearly everyone I talk to in my search for help or information.
Thanks a bunch for the Bogleheads tip, if ING fails, that’s where I will turn.
even more info:
.