In Focus News & Insights

Nearly everyone dreams of winning the lottery and sailing into their sunset years of retirement aboard a superyacht of financial freedom and security. The problem is, however, that simply buying a lottery ticket is very unlikely to result in anything other than the needless spending of your hard-earned money.

In fact, when you buy a Euromillions ticket your chances of winning the jackpot are just 1 in 139,838,160* – you are almost certainly more likely to be struck by lightning or involved in a road accident while on the way to buy your lottery ticket than of winning the jackpot.

The Need for Trusted, Holistic Financial Advice Just Keeps Growing Thankfully, the haunting spectre of Brexit has not dispelled the lure of Portugal among those who are looking for a calm, safe and beautiful place in which to spend their retirement years, and with the rising inflow of expats, the need for quality advice has […]

As reported in our Big Deal blog, the UK and Spain have a tax treaty agreement for Gibraltar and Spain. This 2019 treaty is designed to clarify a number of important issues, including the long-standing, contentious issues of tax disputes and tax residency.

Furthermore, the Treaty resolves the issue of Gibraltar's ongoing consistency with EU law following Brexit as the British Overseas Territory has elected to retain legislation equivalent to EU law on all matters related to financial transparency, taxation, administration and Anti-Money Laundering.

Discretionary fund management (DFM) is an increasingly important component of the expat financial advice offering.

There are many reasons for this; from the way it frees time for the adviser to focus on wealth management, to the flexible, bespoke and client-focused level of service offered by the DFM firm. It is all about providing solutions that work for the client, and by allowing a trusted, expert third-party to make decisions related to asset allocation and fund selection, clients can have increased confidence that they will achieve their financial goals.

If your expat financial adviser in the Netherlands has not alerted you to the fact already, you should be aware that the deadlines for Dutch tax returns are looming. Depending on your circumstances, these are as follows:

30 April – This is the general deadline and applies to the majority of taxpayers in the Netherlands 1 July – This is the deadline for most non-residents, including those who are newly arrived in the Netherlands as well as all other parties who qualify as M Form taxpayers (those who have only spent part of the tax year in the Netherlands due to immigration or emigration)

An investigation by The Pensions Regulator has for the first time resulted in an immediate custodial sentence for the perpetrator of professional pensions fraud, after William Bessent, an accountant who used his position as the trustee and administrator of a pension scheme to steal his clients' savings, was sentenced to 40 months in prison. He pleaded guilty to multiple fraud charges, making prohibited employer-related investments, and separate charges of acting as a director while disqualified.

The landmark case, being heard at Preston Crown Court* will also hopefully result in the return of stolen funds. On July 5 the courts will seek to obtain a confiscation order in order to make Bessent repay the remainder of the money he owes; he has so far repaid £80,000 but owes a further £200,000.

Expat financial advice is a must for any British expat living in Portugal, Spain or Italy to ensure they meet their cross-border taxation obligations while also making the most of the financial growth and preservation opportunities available to them.

However, there is no off-the-shelf recipe for success in this regard. Instead, expat financial advisers need to take full account of every client's individual circumstances before recommending any product or strategy.

Furthermore, the parameters affecting expat investors are subject to jurisdictional differences and change, so it is not only essential that expat financial advisers stay abreast of their clients' changing needs and circumstances but also the changing legal and regulatory environment in which their investments operate.

The structure of your wealth and your tax affairs should always depend on the particular laws and regulations of where you reside in the world as well as the nature of your long-term goals. The expat financial services market has evolved in order to help cater to these considerations and in some cases this includes helping ensure clients meet the demands of wealth tax.

The notion of wealth tax is an easy one to understand – a tax levied on personal capital above a certain threshold or thresholds – but it is by no means universally embraced as economic good sense, not least because it often may serve only to keep high net worth individuals from emigrating to a high wealth tax jurisdiction.