audelair

I definitely agree to send certified or signature confirmation. As for incoming mail, I guess all I can do is expect it and inquire, as you say.

Congratulations! My wife recently started learning and will be going for a driving exam sometime in the next few months. Passing the driving exam is a huge step!

Over the past couple of years, at this address, I have had some important items misdelivered (and delayed for up to a couple of weeks) and completely lost in the mail. This included a recent tax form that never arrived, and a few bills over the past year. It just made me wonder what would happen if an important notification from the immigration department got lost, leading to us missing the biometrics appointment or interview appointment? Or even worse, getting a green card lost in the mail??? Has this ever happened to anyone? Stuff like this makes me wish there was a way to get electronic notification or have online status to check online or something!

My wife says the "s" word a lot. As for Chinese, we both say "Ta Ma De" a lot, which is a pretty general way to curse in Chinese.

Yea, my wife was wiring money from the mainland... although i still need to find some details on that! I mentioned Taiwan just as an example of a situation where my parents much preferred dealing with US financial institutes. oops! I was thinking about expense ratios, and then started talking about tax rates.

[quote name='SirLancelot' date='Feb 12 2007, 02:17 PM' I would be EXTREMELY interested in knowing the details surrounding how your wife was able to wire out a substantial amount of money out of China. Was the funds being wired out ALREADY in USD? Or was she wiring out RMB? She wired money in RMB. I don't know all the details, but she and her classmates all did it with no problem. I will ask again to see if there is anything I am missing.

Yea, taxes will always be paid, but it should only be paid once. (whether it is paid to the foreign country or paid in your home country) Well, the way I see it is this. I have foreign investments, and dividends have tax withheld by foreign countries (probably on average, about 30%). Since I pay taxes on those dividends in the US as well, I can claim a foreign tax credit (box 6 on 1099-DIV), so that i'm not double-taxed. For Chinese citizens, their dividends will also have 30% tax withheld (in this case, the foreign government is the US). Rather than paying taxes again in China and taking a credit, I'd imagine most citizens will not even bother with it. So the difference is that they pay taxes once in the foreign country (the US) and none at home (in China). (in contrast to me paying once in my home country and taking a credit for taxes I paid to the other country). Unfortunately, they get tax withheld at 30%, whereas we get a qualified dividend rate of 15%. But since dividends are only a portion of the total return, and the difference in tax rates is only 15 basis points, I do think the tax implications are not unattractive at all. Also, the US ONLY taxes dividends (and does not tax capital gains). Unless the Chinese citizen pays cap gains taxes in China (which I doubt they would do), this ends up being a favorable tax treatment (compared to domestic investors in the US). I'm still trying to wrap my head around the whole thing, though.

skibum, Thanks for the response. I do not know anything about the investment opportunities there, but I do know that my parents have complained about high fees/commissions and poor regulation in the financial markets in Taiwan. For that reason, I also believe that they are better off putting their money in savings over there. I definitely agree that people will most comfortable working with the financial system that is close to home, and familiar. I'm biased, because I'm from the US. I do think that, if properly educated, the option of moving money to the US, opening a discount brokerage account, and accessing broad global market indices (through extremely low-cost ETF's) should be very attractive to Chinese citizens who have money to invest. I'd imagine it's much lower cost, and more tools to build a properly diversified longterm portfolio. The feasibility seems to be there, but that doesn't mean that they are willing to go through with it.

I know that in Taiwan, the available mutual funds have very high fees and commissions, and I would imagine many countries suffer from that, including China. I know it's even popular for Europeans to send money to US brokerages due to the low cost and efficient system that we have here. I'm also curious about getting funds to China. My wife seemed to have no problem wiring a substantial sum of money out of China, and many of her friends have done the same thing (due to study abroad). Are there occasional problems involved with wiring out of China?

As an American, I feel fortunate to have access to the most developed and advanced financial markets in the world to invest my retirement savings in a diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds. Being an American, I have taken it for granted. In addition, we have access to lots of information to learn about investing (of course we are also inundated with terrible advice from Wall Street, but that is a different story altogether). I have looked briefly into the feasibility of nonresident aliens to set up a brokerage account in the US, and it seems like it is very accessible. Setting up a taxpayer ID number is easy, and most major brokerages allow a nonresident alien to set up an account. The tax implications simply involve a 30% taxation on dividends (we as Americans get taxed anyway, albeit at a lower qualified rate for now). Additionally capital gains are untaxed by the IRS. I believe the only additional issue is that Chinese citizens would legally be required to pay taxes on earnings to the Chinese goverment (although I would be very surprised if anyone would actually declare proceeds from stock/fund sales to the Chinese government!). Another issue is that nonresident aliens would be unable to invest in mutual/index funds directly with major institutions (like Fidelity or Vanguard). On the other hand, they can build a diversified portfolio of investments with exchange-traded-funds (ETF's), which is just as good (in my opinion, even better than traditional mutual funds). In short, they would be able to purchase anything sold on the major stock exchanges (including ETF's). So it's seems easy for a Chinese citizen to send their money to America and invest in global assets (including investing in China stocks, if they are interested). I am just wondering if anyone knows whether it is popular for Chinese citizens to do something like this? Most people I know (relatives and friends) are only interested in putting money away in a savings account in China. They have no knowledge of the financial markets outside of China. Additionally, I doubt they would feel comfortable sending their money overseas (seems so far away to them!). I have not really talked to any friends or relatives in China regarding this, because it is hard for me to communicate all the risks involved, and I strongly believe that anyone should personally understand exactly what they are exposing themselves to before putting their hard-earned money down. But I am very curious to know whether overseas investing has started to become popular yet in China? My very limited research on it shows that it is very easy to do, and totally available to them. And I also think it's a GREAT idea for them to spread their assets around. I'd be curious to hear any thoughts on this and whether it's possible that Chinese individuals will start taking part in the global capital markets (if they haven't already).

Never tried...It might be more difficult...Most banks here issue AE ones to their customers for free...well at least mine does, Chase... Yea, WAMU charges a 2.5% fee for AE traveler's checks. It looks like i may have to go that route though, what with the difficulty of obtaining new, crisp bills

Argh! I have gone to 3 branches, and apparently they can't go into their big stash of cash. They can only give what other customers gave them or what they have in their cash register. So after going to 3 branches, I'm still stuck with 7 imperfect bills. There are no rips in them, but there is noticeable wear in the middle of the bill, where it's usually folded (like inside a wallet). This is very normal, but will this be scrutinized and rejected by BOC tellers in China? I was hoping I wouldn't have to run to the bank again tomorrow, as I really was only planning to make one trip to take care of money (lol). So are slightly imperfect bills (no marks, no rips, but slight wear in the middle) from 2003 worth worrying about? Or should I just go and enjoy my trip Actually I was stuck with 12 imperfect bills, but I ended up depositing the 5 worst ones back into my bank account. These last 7, i'm really wondering what to do with them

Does anyone use the AAA Visa traveler's cheques. Or do you recommend using only the Amex ones? Thank you very much!

I am a member of AAA, but I think they only offer Visa traveler's checks (not American Express). Do those work ok there? Thanks for the advice!

Thanks, I will go back to the bank on Monday and try to get newer bills!

It seems like people in the past have had problems with bank tellers rejecting their cash? I have some nice crisp $100 bills. They are all in decent shape, and have the big Franklin head on it, although some of them are as old as 1996 (can't see a difference between those and the 2003's). As long as they are fairly new, crisp, and have the big head, is that going to be ok? The teller wasn't able to give me better ones here at my local bank, so it seems it would be a hassle for me to go around trying to get better bills! Thanks for any advice.

My family is Taiwanese, and my wife is Chinese. So this is a situation I am very interested in, as we definitely want to visit relatives in the near future. I'll be very interested in any definitive information on this. Anybody here had any experience with it?

What is the difference between extending a currently valid passport and renewing it? Does renewing it entail getting a new passport? When would one renew rather than extend?

Thanks for the heads up on that. I will bring the marriage certificate (she still hasn't changed her name, so I expect things to go smoothly).

Hello, My wife has a conditional green card, that doesn't expire for another year. We plan on going to China this winter to visit her family. Is there any concern at all about entry into China or re-entry back to the US, that we might not know about? She still has her passport and will have her green card with her, and it seems to me that that is all she needs. Should we prepare any other documents just in case (with concern with either China or US port of entries)? Thank you very much.

Excellent. Thank you very much. The IRS response was simple and sweet, and it pretty much answers my questions. I was just worried there was more complex rules that I didn't know about.

It seems that even though we went through immigration and obtained my wife's social security card legitimately, my poor wife's name and SSN still raises a red flag Our mutual fund account at Vanguard just got frozen. I have a bunch of money I liquidated and wanted to move in there, and now I can't. We need to wait for forms to come in the mail, and sign it and return it. It will take over a week to rectify this. Has anyone dealt with this? Do I have to call my local bank and see if they need anything? How about the credit card I got her? I don't want to wait until checks start bouncing and transactions get denied before I find out other accounts are having problems. Has anyone run into this at all? The guy on the phone said it was related to the Patriot Act. Thanks for any guidance you can offer!

i guess i'll be sending it in then Thanks for the feedback.

Someone mentioned in a previous thread that you can't e-file if you want to treat your nonresident alien as a resident (an election you are allowed to make). I was wondering if anyone has found a way to do this, perhaps by sending in the letter and e-filing the rest. I'm just curious because I could file my federal and California taxes online if it wasn't for this one letter. Just wanted to hear from other people's experiences. Thanks!

My wife came in on a CR-1 and is a conditional permanent resident with a social security card. She arrived January 2006. I plan on filing her with me as a non-resident wife (as an exemption) for my 2005 tax filing. I'm wondering, can I go as far as opening up a Roth IRA retirement account for 2005 (we have up until mid-April) to contribute to Roth IRA's. Is there any legal/tax complications to doing this? If not, is there any reason why there would be any complications getting started on her retirement for the 2006 tax year? Thanks for any advice!