I got a huge dividend payout yesterday of £0.37 (I’m rich!) but I couldn’t make sense of the calculations - I’m not sure if I’m reading the calculations incorrectly or there’s a mistake.
I’m not complaining as I think I should have got less, but just flagging in case anyone is not looking at the calculations and having similar issues and maybe getting less than they should.
As per the screenshot the GBP amount per share is approx ÂŁ0.13 and I have a tiny bit over 2 shares so would expect ÂŁ0.26 - ÂŁ0.27.
It looks like they’ve ignored the withholding tax when calculating the “GBP rate per share” and then just multiplied that value by the number of shares.
Not really - see above answer, 2 shares x £0.13 isn’t £0.37! It’s almost like it’s ignoring the FX rate and doing 1:1 USD to GBP conversion (but completely guessing there)
Yep 37p paid in! I was originally doing the maths when the dividend landed whilst I was up with my 9 week old baby at 4am so glad I actually got it right tbh!!
I’ve had a check of previous US dividends I’ve received, and they do look to be calculated correctly, including previous apple dividends. I’d flag that one up to support to investigate.
I can see a similar issue in my statement, where the implied GBPUSD is of 1 to convert from Net distribution to Total dividend. @samtuckett, I think that the same may apply in your case, and the difference between 0.38 and 0.37 may simply be due to different rounding rules.
I have got the same problem and I also wonder that are we have £2000 dividend tax allowance (GIA account)? If yes why are we charged with 15% dividend income tax although it’s within the allowance?
But essentially, the US always charges a withholding tax of 30% of dividends. Certain countries, including the UK, have negotiated deals with the US so their tax residents pay a reduced rate. In our case, that’s 15%.
You filled in the W-8BEN form when you signed up for Freetrade to declare you were eligible for this this tax reduction from 30% to 15%.
