ETF domicile

Hi Anon,

Yup, you're right, Ireland-domiciled ETFs are quite advantageous to SG investors due to the 0% withholding tax between these 2 countries. Another one would be HK-domiciled ETFs.

However, do note that while the country of domicile (ie withholding tax) does have an impact on investment returns, this impact is only pronounced and significant for high dividend yield stocks/ETFs or if your portfolio is significantly large. If you're just starting out with a small portfolio, this is unlikely to make much difference to your portfolio, and your main source of costs would be broker fees. Thus it would make more sense to make investment decisions to minimise broker fees during the early stages of your investment and transition into a strategy to minimise withholding tax at a later time.

I wrote an article about this specifically pertaining to US-domiciled VS Ireland-domiciled S&P 500 ETFs, you can check it out here if you're interested!

Regards,

thefrugalstudent