thegreatrsd
New member
Hi!
As a beginner investor, I was researching ways to diversify my rather unbalanced (100% VUSA) portfolio. I decided to buy some US Treasury bonds and simply hold them until maturity. However, I came across this thing called "withholding tax". AFAIK, this tax gets applied when I receive any yield (in form of dividends or interest) from a foreign entity. In case of the US companies the default rate is 30%, but since there's a double tax treaty between USA and Poland (which I'm a resident of), the applied rate would be reduced to 15%.
In a comment to this post, @bevinluvwithjesus wrote: "Polish tax office says I have to pay a difference between Polish rate (19%) and rate from treaty (15%)". This triggered my interest, however, not being a Polish speaker, I failed to find any information on how to properly resolve such cases. I kindly ask for your help.
As a beginner investor, I was researching ways to diversify my rather unbalanced (100% VUSA) portfolio. I decided to buy some US Treasury bonds and simply hold them until maturity. However, I came across this thing called "withholding tax". AFAIK, this tax gets applied when I receive any yield (in form of dividends or interest) from a foreign entity. In case of the US companies the default rate is 30%, but since there's a double tax treaty between USA and Poland (which I'm a resident of), the applied rate would be reduced to 15%.
In a comment to this post, @bevinluvwithjesus wrote: "Polish tax office says I have to pay a difference between Polish rate (19%) and rate from treaty (15%)". This triggered my interest, however, not being a Polish speaker, I failed to find any information on how to properly resolve such cases. I kindly ask for your help.
- First of all, what is the appropriate way to notify the tax service about receiving a dividend or interest payment? When we simply sell securities, we must fill the PIT-38 Form and that's all. However, I've stumbled across some mentions of the necessity of "PIT / ZG" Form when dealing with dividends.
- If my broker (currently Revolut) automatically withholds 15% from my profit, and then after examining my papers the tax office claims that I should pay 4% extra - should I obey or dispute it? Or maybe I should pay this difference on my own in advance to avoid the late fee?
- Do the tax rates differ between foreign jurisdictions? For example, what would be the withholding tax rates if I receive:
a) payments from a bond issued by the German government;
b) dividends from an ETF listed somewhere in the EU;
c) fixed-rate interest from a broker located in Ireland (e.g. Interactive Brokers).And will these taxes also be "rounded up" to the Polish rate?