How to transfer money from EU to US

[Lukas Vanagaitis]

My parents are not a US citizens and live in EU. They just sold one property in EU and now I want to use that money to invest here in US. How to transfer little less than $100k from European bank to US bank without being taxed in two countries and transfer fees? Any ideas? Thoughts? Thank you guys

[Andy D.]

Your parents have no US tax issue from what you describe, as they are neither US citizens, nor US resident nor was the property located in the US. Any other tax issues in their country of resident obviously need to be dealt with locally and do not concern you as it was them who sold it. You should also have no tax implications, especially if this is only a loan. But that you should, as already said, verify with a US tax advisor.

With respect to the transfer: just give the sending bank all the relevant information for your US account (account number, bank name, routing number, account designation and whatever else they might need; ask them) and they will transfer the money - for a fee. Typically you will be charged on both sides, although the transfer fees are, from my experience, not relative to the amount you transfer. So the higher the amount you transfer the cheaper it gets - relatively. The fee remains the same. But that obviously depends on the banks involved. So check that, on both ends.

As regards the forex fees: the sending bank will typically charge an arm and a leg on that end. So do negotiate that. This is assuming that the money is not already in $US but in EUR. If it's already in USD then there will be no issue in that regard.