Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016?

Re:Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016? by susi22 on Sunday December 11, 2016 @09:28AM (#13151186)

GERMANS: Be aware! Don't buy any US ETFs when you pay taxes in Germany. There is pretty heavy penalty tax on ETFs. Depends on the difference of the price on the first day of trading of the year and on the last. If unlucky you can pay 50% tax on your gains. I did just this year pay 45% and I won't be getting it back. Read thru this first: https://www.justetf.com/de-en/news/etf/steuereinfach-in-etfs...

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Re:Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016? by leonhandreke on Sunday December 11, 2016 @03:47PM (#13153093)

I have read the link you posted and I'm still not clear on how you would end up paying ~50% and not be able to get it back.

If your ETF is "ausländisch thesaurierend" ("foreign accumulating"), declaring it will be a bit more complicated but not that hard. Would you mind explaining your situation a bit better? Maybe I'm missing something (and I wouldn't want to, since I'm looking into this topic myself at the moment).

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Re:Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016? by distances on Sunday December 11, 2016 @03:21PM (#13152976)

Do you mean also for accumulating ETFs? Are you supposed to list all ETF purchase prices/start-of-year value, and the end-of-the-year value in the tax declaration, then?

Do Germans not have any practical way to invest in accumulating funds?

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Re:Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016? by joshuakarjala on Tuesday December 13, 2016 @03:34PM (#13170714)

DENMARK: Similar problem - you pay yearly capital gains tax on foreign ETF :(

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Re:Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016? by czechdeveloper on Sunday December 11, 2016 @06:08AM (#13150555)

You can buy Vanguard via their ETF funds using any broker. I do.

Just beware of taxes.

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Re:Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016? by ownagefool on Sunday December 11, 2016 @06:14AM (#13150573)

Rules are a bit different. I'm in the UK and you need £100,000 to go direct with Vanguard and thus you need to go with a broeker.

https://www.charles-stanley-direct.co.uk/ is a good shout, but there may be better depending on how you'd like to invest.

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Re:Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016? by ivm on Monday December 12, 2016 @08:15AM (#13157793)

https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/EU_investing

For non-EU/US residents I got a recommendation for http://int.tddirectinvesting.com/

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Re:Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016? by EngineerBetter on Sunday December 11, 2016 @07:17AM (#13150748)

I use Nutmeg, had a return of 7% over two years, and I've also just opened an account with MoneyFarm.

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Re:Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016? by ownagefool on Sunday December 11, 2016 @07:46AM (#13150835)

Nutmeg has a really nice looking website and is heavily promoted, but I'm not really sure it's a great recommendation as the associated fees are higher than competitors.

Is there a value add that I'm missing?

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Re:Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016? by icebraining on Sunday December 11, 2016 @07:52AM (#13150859)

I'm using DEGIRO (based in the NL), seems to be OK, decent website and low fees. They have this weird thing about loaning out your shares in the regular accounts; I couldn't quite get the risk I'd be exposed to in that case, so I went with a Custody account.

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Re:Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016? by Huppie on Sunday December 11, 2016 @03:51PM (#13153113)

Same here. Just wondering, are you using the Ireland based Vanguard ETFs (i.e. VWRL, VEUR, etc.) or the US-based ones (VTI, VGT, etc.)?

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Re:Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016? by icebraining on Sunday December 11, 2016 @04:52PM (#13153548)

Neither :) I'm using an Amsterdam based one: https://www.euronext.com/en/products/etfs/IE00B3XXRP09-XAMS

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Re:Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016? by Huppie on Sunday December 11, 2016 @05:12PM (#13153677)

While traded on the Amsterdam stock exchange, the domicile of the fund is still Ireland.[1]

Anyway, since you're in Europe, curious why you chose this fund (S&P 500) over something with more exposure outside the US?

[1]: https://www.vanguard.nl/portal/instl/nl/en/product.html#/fun...

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Re:Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016? by icebraining on Sunday December 11, 2016 @05:43PM (#13153851)

Ah, right, I didn't pay close attention. I selected the S&P mostly as a simple "default" choice to start. It doesn't really matter, since it'll be a while before I can invest any significant amounts.

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Re:Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016? by iSloth on Sunday December 11, 2016 @07:42AM (#13150827)

I get vanguard in the Uk via HL, some funds are on there and the fees are not too bad for the most part.

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Re:Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016? by twic on Sunday December 11, 2016 @09:14AM (#13151139)

If you're on HL, you could also look at their 'core trackers':

http://www.hl.co.uk/funds/index-tracker-funds/wealth-150

For example, that provides the FTSE all-share through an L&G fund:

http://www.hl.co.uk/funds/fund-discounts,-prices--and--facts...

Which has fractionally lower fees than the Vanguard equivalent:

http://www.hl.co.uk/funds/fund-discounts,-prices--and--facts...

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Re:Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016? by tonyedgecombe on Sunday December 11, 2016 @10:14AM (#13151366)

The fees on HL are quite high though, it's worth shopping around the brokers. http://monevator.com/ is a great resource for this stuff.

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Re:Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016? by ciaranm on Sunday December 11, 2016 @07:14AM (#13150740)

Nutmeg might be worth looking at. I've used it for my pension pot since I left my perm job and went contracting/freelance.

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Re:Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016? by cpach on Sunday December 11, 2016 @01:43PM (#13152414)

That probably depends a lot on which country you live in.

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Re:Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016? by TheArcane on Monday December 12, 2016 @03:54AM (#13156651)

Belgium?

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Re:Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016? by martinko on Sunday December 11, 2016 @06:24AM (#13150596)

I user interactive brokers and just buy VOO (vanguard S&P500 etf)

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