Moving Money

[Hugo2]

P.S. Cashkows informed me that there is a charge of R20000.00 for the opening of a blocked bank account and that it's not at all possible to do this before you leave the country. Both of these statements have proven to be outrageous and untrue according to the Standard Bank official.

Hi, allow me to comment on the above:

See our web link and you will see there is two options and for the the RA encashment you need to be out of SA already. This is a requirement of the the Income tax Act section 1, defn Retirement Annuity. For formal emigration without RA encashment (the stand alone option) you need not be outside SA, you only need to have a PR in a foreign country and a departing air ticket and yes your can apply in advance.

I can't comment on your personal fee but to place in perspective, the Standard Bank fee is one tenth of what you quote our fee to be, so yes for the uninformed it may appear to he horrendously high but the bank only does the form MP336( and nothing more. Our services provides for so much more, which includes your tax status update to non-resident, your tax emigration clearance and the filing of the outstanding tax returns. I have indeed had clients for substantially more than your quote but then they had not filed tax for 8 years, we did the tax catch up, negotiated the tax penalties, collated ALL the supporting documents and guided them to full emigration.

The client I dealt with just a few hours ago, file emigration through one of the big 5 banks and is now stuck at the tax emigration clearance. Why? The bankers said attached the MP336( to your tax emigration application, it will suffice. As an example where our expertise comes in, the MP336 is local assets only and excludes chattels, timeshare RA funds, pension funds, the IT21(a) assets includes world wide assets, excludes "fund" assets but includes trust and cc information. The IT21 is the most complex of all the documents as that determines the capital gains charge you face and NO bank provides that service to you. For this reason our fee is substantially more than that of a bank's stand alone fee.

And just as an example all banks suggest your tax emigration coincides with your formal emigration, and how wrong they can be. I need not elaborate their is adequate comments on this forum as to when you become ATO tax resident - no formal emigration required, it is a free and gratis status with huge implications.

Next time you speak to Standard Bank,s end them my personal regards! Without their knowledge we will all be stuck with Rands only. But will I entrust my tax status and clearance with them? Do I buy my liquor from the chemist? Not really.....

Edited February 12, 2013 by Hugo2

[HadEnoughofJuju]

Hi, allow me to comment on the above:

See our web link and you will see there is two options and for the the RA encashment you need to be out of SA already. This is a requirement of the the Income tax Act section 1, defn Retirement Annuity. For formal emigration without RA encashment (the stand alone option) you need not be outside SA, you only need to have a PR in a foreign country and a departing air ticket and yes your can apply in advance.

I can't comment on your personal fee but to place in perspective, the Standard Bank fee is one tenth of what you quote our fee to be, so yes for the uninformed it may appear to he horrendously high but the bank only does the form MP336( and nothing more. Our services provides for so much more, which includes your tax status update to non-resident, your tax emigration clearance and the filing of the outstanding tax returns. I have indeed had clients for substantially more than your quote but then they had not filed tax for 8 years, we did the tax catch up, negotiated the tax penalties, collated ALL the supporting documents and guided them to full emigration.

The client I dealt with just a few hours ago, file emigration through one of the big 5 banks and is now stuck at the tax emigration clearance. Why? The bankers said attached the MP336( to your tax emigration application, it will suffice. As an example where our expertise comes in, the MP336 is local assets only and excludes chattels, timeshare RA funds, pension funds, the IT21(a) assets includes world wide assets, excludes "fund" assets but includes trust and cc information. The IT21 is the most complex of all the documents as that determines the capital gains charge you face and NO bank provides that service to you. For this reason our fee is substantially more than that of a bank's stand alone fee.

And just as an example all banks suggest your tax emigration coincides with your formal emigration, and how wrong they can be. I need not elaborate their is adequate comments on this forum as to when you become ATO tax resident - no formal emigration required, it is a free and gratis status with huge implications.

Next time you speak to Standard Bank,s end them my personal regards! Without their knowledge we will all be stuck with Rands only. But will I entrust my tax status and clearance with them? Do I buy my liquor from the chemist? Not really.....

Thanks for the info it helps to have all the facts when making a decision. One think I still want to know though is why do I have to pay R20000.00 for a blocked bank account and formal immigration when I only have 1 RA, a house that is sold and SARS owes me money because I have an awesome tax consultant. There are no other sources of income, investments, shares or anything else that needs to be sorted out and my tax is up to date. As Iv'e said many times, sales people are there to make money and I just don't trust them one bit.

Edited February 12, 2013 by HadEnoughofJuju

[bbop]

What bank do you bank with? We are with FNB and in the same position as you. We did not pay anything - but cashkows handled everything. The cheque account just changed one day to blocked resident account. We did not have to open a new account. We are already out of the country, don't know if that makes any difference. I don't trust a bank at all. They will say anything just to get your business and then leave you hanging high and dry. Be careful - you do not want another unfortunate episode!

Edited February 12, 2013 by bbop

[HadEnoughofJuju]

What bank do you bank with? We are with FNB and in the same position as you. We did not pay anything - but cashkows handled everything. The cheque account just changed one day to blocked resident account. We did not have to open a new account. We are already out of the country, don't know if that makes any difference. I don't trust a bank at all. They will say anything just to get your business and then leave you hanging high and dry. Be careful - you do not want another unfortunate episode!

We banked with FNB originally but closed all our accounts because of the extremely high and in my opinion unnecessary bank changes and moved to Capitec. We did this not knowing that we could convert one of the accounts to a blocked bank account and Capitec are not authorised to deal in foreign exchange so we can't use them. Believe me this time I am grilling everyone before I spend a cent. Apologies to the CashKows guys, I don't trust anyone with my money. Before we transfer a cent and anyone does anything relating to our formal emigration they are going to lay all the cards on the table or I'm just going to walk away and find someone who will.

P.S. I have never trusted any bank (not even Capitec)

Edited February 12, 2013 by HadEnoughofJuju

[Sunnyskies]

I'm with Standard, but they haven't blocked my account even though they know I've been out of the country for a number of years. I still find it weird having to prove that I'm not in South Africa in order to comply with their FICA requirements. Maybe the difference is that I have always said that I'm only a South African temporarily abroad - I know that my account is flagged with that so that I don't use a credit card while out of the counry, although you can use it to buy stuff in South Africa. Fortunately here in Aus it seems that once you have done KYC they know who you are and you don't have to keep on proving that you exist - hopefully that remains the case.

[mariusnolan]

Hi ,has any body dealt with TREASURY 1? and if so how do you rate there service?

[JacoO]

Try Exchange4free - sometimes they don't respond within a reasonable time-frame, but they get your money there at a good rate!

* you are not running a Formula 1 transfer and competing here.

I used them and it was all handled professionally from the moment I phoned them up and asked to transfer some Rands to Aus.

The problem I think is that they do it on a daily basis and forget sometimes that someone (new to it all) that is moving a few hundred thousand of their life savings to a number in Australia it is nerve wrecking - If you ask the questions they will help, but it does not come as a standard "service"

Edit:

But prepare to start filling in the documents and sending the originals to them about 14 days before you want to make the actual transfer - there are some documents to fill out before anything can happen.

Edited February 13, 2013 by JacoO

[JacoO]

what do Cashkows + exch4free charge for their services may I ask? I am looking at transferring through FNB and seems for anything under 1 mill transferred to Aus they will charge a max fee of R750........doesn't seem all that bad to me.

Exchange4free takes the current "trading" spot rate and adds a commission of 1% onto it:

thus - http://www.xe.com/ucc/convert/?Amount=1&From=AUD&To=ZAR

if it is trading at R9.15 on the website - they will charge you R9.24 (approx trading)

If you transfer over R100,000 they don't have any transfer fees to be paid.

*Think there is a R200 fee if you transfer less.

[mariusnolan]

Treasury 1 on the same calculation offer R9.175

[HadEnoughofJuju]

It's amazing how the sales people disappear when you start asking pointed questions that shed light on the unknown facts about formal emigration. I am still waiting for a response from two of the above mentioned companies and it's been almost a week now. Hmm, wonder if I will ever hear from them again.

[bbop]

Our RA's were paid out yesterday and today! Smooth sailing throughout the whole process. Thanks Cashkows for the great job.

[jnv108]

I just used www.incompass.co.za to send money to my account in Oz. The rate was 9.15 at the time and the rate I received was 9.27. Typically 12 cents

Also the service was excellent.

[GideonVD]

Good to know, thanks

[ralfieboy]

Hi all

New to all of this,but was wondering by when should one start to think about surrendering annuities and registering with SARS. I have been issued with permanent residency for WA, but not sure yet when we will leave. will cashknows help with this?

[GideonVD]

The earlier the better, get them on board sooner and then you should be able to identify issue earlier and sort them out quicker before the final date

[HadEnoughofJuju]

To surrender a RA you need to formally emigrate and to complete that process you need an Australian Tax Number which you can only get once you have taken up permanent residence in Australia so you can start the process but you will not be able to finalize it until you have actually moved. I would say get started as soon as you can with all the paperwork and yes CashKows, TreasuryOne, Exchange4Free can all help with the process.

[Hendie]

We transferred ous via CashKows as well. At that time they worked together with Exchange4Free to get the job done. Not sure if that working relationship still exists, but CashKows proved to be the best at guiding the process quickly and efficiently.

[bbop]

We also used Cashkows. Our money paid out successfully with no hic-cups along the way