Diversify into US stocks
and ETFs

Withdrawing your funds is easy. You can sell any shares/ETFs at any time. There is no lock-in period. After selling your investments, you may choose to:

• Keep the funds (in USD) in your brokerage account
• Buy/sell other investment products
• Withdraw your funds

On selling the securities, your funds will settle and be available for withdrawal after 2 business days. Here’s the step-by-step process to withdraw your funds.

Step 1: Click on the ‘Fund Transfer’ option.
Step 2: Click on ‘Withdrawal.’
Step 3: Enter the bank account details.
Step 4: Confirm the withdrawal.

Also, here are a few pointers to note.

• The current charges for getting the funds back to your Indian bank account are 11 USD per withdrawal.
• We do not profit from the wire fees as they are charged by the bank in the US.
• We continuously strive to make this lower by engaging with new partners.

Tax implications come into play under two categories, namely capital gains and dividends.

Taxes on capital gains:

You will be taxed in India for the capital gains you earn on selling your investments. You will not be taxed in the US for these earnings. The amount of taxes you have to pay in India depends on how long you hold the investment.

• To qualify as a long-term capital asset, the shares must be held for at least 24 months. The gain will then be taxed at the long-term capital gains tax rate of 20% (plus applicable surcharge and cess fees), with indexation benefits.
• ● If you hold the shares for less than 24 months, the gains qualify as short-term capital gains. They will be taxed as a part of your regular income in India. The tax rate is based on the tax bracket that you fall under, according to your total income.

Taxes on dividends:

Unlike capital gains, the dividends you earn from your US investments will be taxed in the US at a flat rate of 25%. For example, if Microsoft gives an investor in India $100 as dividend, $25 will be withheld as tax. Subsequently, this post-tax dividend is included as taxable income in India (as normal income).

Fortunately, the US and India have a Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA), which allows taxpayers to offset income tax already paid in the US. The 25% tax you already paid in the US is made available as Foreign Tax Credit. You can use it to offset the income tax payable in India.

At the end of fiscal year, we will send you a consolidated statement of your transactions, capital gains and dividend that will help simplify the tax process for you.

Fractional investing is one of the unique things about the US stock markets. Investors can own fractions of stocks, unlike in countries like India. So, for instance, you could own 0.01 of an Amazon stock.

Fractional investing is useful because of the following reasons:

• You can decide to invest based on a certain amount of money. For instance, if a stock is valued at $100 and you decide to invest $10 in it, you will still get 0.1 shares.
• Many US stocks are really high-priced. For example, Amazon’s shares cost around $2,000 each. So, with fractional stocks, you could effectively build a diversified portfolio even with small amounts of money.