moving family deposits away from Greece (possibly in UK)

Question

Me and my family are worried about the current financial situation in Greece and want to move our deposits away to an another more stable country. Is this too much? We've seen other people doing it.

The most possible destination is United Kingdom where I currently live.

Questions:

Do we need to pay tax?

We want to open a join account with me and my sibling (one). Her question, as a lawyer, is if this will immediately move me to an another tax regime than the one I am currently in?

Will there be any auditing involved? Everything has been (of course) legitimate, but I am concerned about the effort.

Needless to say (I think it's obvious) my knowledge of finance stops at Microeconomics 101 and accounting 101 I had at university.

Thank you.

Answer 1

1. I can't comment about your tax liability in Greece. You will have to pay tax on interest in the UK.

2. If you are earning massive amounts of interest, unlikely with the current interest policies from Merv, then you might be bumped up a tier.

3. The receiving bank may ask for proof of the source of the funds, particularly if it is a fair chunk of change.

Answer 2

I think you can do it as long as those money don't come from illegal activities (money laundering, etc).

The only taxes you should pay are on the interest generated by those money while sitting in the UK bank account. Since I suppose you already paid taxes on those money in Greece while you were earning those money.

About being audited, in my own experience banks don't ask you much where your money are coming from when you bring money to them, they are very willing to help, and happy. (It's a differnte story when you ask to borrow money). When I opened a bank account in US I did not even have an SSN, but they didn't care much they just took my passport and used the passport number for registering the account. Obviously on the interest generated by the money in the US bank account I had to pay taxes, but it was easy because I simply let the IRS via the bank to withdarw the 27% on the interest generated (not on the capital deposited). I didn't put a huge amount of money there I had to live there for 1 year or some more. Maybe if i deposited a huge amount of money someone would have come to ask me how did I make all those money, but those money were legally generated by me working in Italy before so I didn't have anything to be afraid about.

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BTW: in Italy I was thinking to move money to a German bank in Germany. The risk of default is a nightmare, something of completly new now in UE compared to the past where each state had its own currency.

According to Muro history says that in case of default it happened that some government prevented people from withdrawing money form bank accounts:

"Yes, historically governments have shut down banks to prevent people from withdrawing their money in times of crisis. See Argentina circa 2001 or US during Great Depression. The government prevented people from withdrawing their money and people could do nothing while their money rapidly lost value."

but in case Greece prevents people from withdrwaing money, those money are still in EURO, so i'm wondering what would be the effect. I mean would it be fair that a Greek guy can not withdraw is EURO money whilest an Italian guy can withdraw the same currency money in Italy?!