My worries exactly, I am nowhere near as sanguine about Vanguard's response as bluejeansman.Thank you for the hard work with Vanguard, bluejeansman. Two follow-ups:
- were you able to get any information about W8-BEN and withholding tax practices post-2025?
- has anyone heard whether the 'retired' mutual fund website will be taken down? How would one manage the account, e.g., adjust recurring withdrawals or initiate lump sum withdrawals, if that is the case?
Vanguard has said the mutual fund only platform will be "retired". Both bluejeansman and I work in IT, and we know what "retiring" software means. It goes away. Taken off Vanguard servers. No longer extant. Consigned to backup media only.
Unless Vanguard assigns an intern to write a basic login and front-end that at least shows the account balance, anything you can do will be by phone and post. Vanguard already makes it borderline impossible to set up a new international wire, by requiring a medallion signature guarantee, something effectively unattainable for non-US resident (and extremely awkward even for US residents). That will not improve; likely it will degrade further. I can readily foresee that they will only send USD checks, which you will then have to pay to have processed at a home country bank, while also accepting a poor forex rate.
As for W-8BEN handling, although Vanguard customer service have been predictably useless throughout on this topic, I can very much believe their response to Else that they will not handle them. The result - and I am already facing this as a result of another Vanguard random "policy" - is 30% IRS withholding and a wait of up to 18 months or more to recover that from the IRS.
Finally, it appears that anyone who already had a Vanguard brokerage account before they left the US will be able to keep it. So Vanguard seems to have no particular problem with at least some nonresident aliens having these, only the transition to one. This is all Vanguard "policy"; there is no legal or regulatory reason pushing this, merely intransigence on the part of Vanguard.
So while bluejeansman (thank you!) has done great work to finally prise something that is at least somewhat reliable out of Vanguard, to me this looks far from "good enough news". Personally, I think this whole thing stinks.
My guess is that they won't know, and will effectively say wait and see. From all the evidence we have, Vanguard has absolutely no plan beyond an intention to turn off the mutual fund only software at the end of next year. Everything else is apparently TBD.Good questions, Vogatrice. I have not spoken to anyone at Vanguard yet. They have given me a name and number, so I should be able to call and find out.
Statistics: Posted by TedSwippet — Sat Nov 02, 2024 3:47 am — Replies 70 — Views 6637