I tend to keep Foreign Stocks in non-retirement accounts (Personal preference)
The way I understand it is if you keep foreign stocks in a tax-deferred (IRA, 401k, 403) account you are not allowed to take the foreign tax credit. As pointed out earlier some foreign dividends are qualified. I think all the big ones from Switzerland and Germany are qualified - Nestle, Novartis, Roche and Allianz come to mind. (Just took in the ass on Allianz when Gross left Pimco.).
Here's an explanation from Schwab:
"Deferred accounts.
Since you don't pay current taxes on investment income in your IRA or 401(k), there's no deduction or credit currently available for foreign taxes paid on investments held in these accounts.
Think of it as a timing issue: The amount you pay in foreign taxes today reduces your retirement assets, and therefore reduces the amount of tax the IRS is able to collect when you start making withdrawals.
A Roth account is another story since qualified withdrawals are tax-free in the United States. In the case of a Roth, you're just out the money. However, it could still make sense to hold foreign investments in tax-advantaged retirement accounts. There are many other factors to consider apart from what might be a relatively immaterial amount of foreign tax. ".
In other words, it takes a very sharp pencil to figure things out to the best advantage and as Schwab says is it really worth it.
Returning to the purpose of this thread... The Gruber Confession
[B]The Gruber Confession[/B], by Charles Krauthammer
[URL]http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-the-gruber-confession/2014/11/13/474595bc-6b6b-11e4-9fb4-a622dae742a2_story.html[/URL]
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Its not exactly the Ems Dispatch (the diplomatic cable Bismarck doctored to provoke the 1870 Franco-Prussian War). But what the just-resurfaced Gruber Confession lacks in world-historical consequence, it makes up for in world-class cynicism. This October 2013 video shows MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, a principal architect of Obamacare, admitting that, in order to get it passed, the law was made deliberately obscure and deceptive. [B]It constitutes the ultimate vindication of the charge that Obamacare was sold on a pack of lies.[/B]
Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage, said Gruber. Basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass.
First, Gruber said, the bills authors manipulated the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which issues gold-standard cost estimates of any legislative proposal: [B]This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes.[/B] Why? Because if CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. And yet, the president himself openly insisted that the individual mandate what you must pay the government if you fail to buy health insurance was not a tax.
[B]Worse was the pretense that Obamacare wouldn't cost anyone anything. [/B]On the contrary, its a win-win, insisted President Obama, promising that the typical family would save $2,500 on premiums every year.
Skeptics like me pointed out the obvious: You cant subsidize 30 million uninsured without someone paying something. Indeed, Gruber admits, Obamacare was a huge transfer of wealth which had to be hidden from the American people, because if you had a law which made explicit that healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed.
Remember: The whole premise of Obamacare was that it would help the needy, but if you were not in need, [B]if you liked what you had, you would be left alone[/B]. Which is why Obama kept repeating Politifact counted 31 times that if you like your plan, you can keep your plan.
[B]But of course you couldn't, as millions discovered when they were kicked off their plans last year.[/B] Millions more were further shocked when they discovered major hikes in their premiums and deductibles. It was their wealth that was being redistributed.
As NBC News and others reported last year, [B]the administration knew this all along[/B]. But White House political hands overrode those wary about the presidents phony promise. In fact, Obama knew the falsity of his claim as far back as February 2010 when, at a meeting with congressional leaders, he agreed that millions would lose their plans.
Now, its not unconstitutional to lie. But it is helpful for citizens to know the cynicism with which the massive federalization of their health care was crafted.
It gets even worse, thanks again to Gruber. Last week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case claiming that the administration is violating its own health care law, which clearly specifies that subsidies can be given only to insurance purchased on exchanges established by the state. Just 13 states have set up such exchanges. Yet the administration is giving tax credits to plans bought on the federal exchange serving 37 states despite what the law says.
If the government loses, the subsidy system collapses and, with it, Obamacare itself. Which is why the administration is frantically arguing that exchanges established by the state is merely sloppy drafting, a kind of legislative typo. And that the intent all along was to subsidize all plans on all exchanges.
Re-enter professor Gruber. On a separate video in a different speech, he explains what Obamacare intended: If you're a state and you dont set up an exchange, that means your citizens dont get their tax credits. The legislative idea was to coerce states into setting up their own exchanges by otherwise denying their citizens subsidies.
This may have been a stupid idea, but it was no slip. And its the law, as written, as enacted and as intended. It can be changed by Congress only, not by the Executive. Which is precisely what the plaintiffs are saying. Q.E.D.
Its refreshing that the most transparent administration in history, as this administration fancies itself, should finally display candor about its signature act of social change. Inadvertently, of course. But now we know what lay behind Obamas smooth reassurances [B]the arrogance of an academic liberalism that rules in the name of a citizenry it mocks, disdains and deliberately, contemptuously deceives.[/B]
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MIT professor Jonathan Gruber's public comments detailing the deliberate lies to sell Obamacare
[QUOTE=RevBS;442434]A masterpiece from the man himself until I caught the name Charles Krauthammer. A noted antagonist of Barrack Obama, excellence par non. He bashes Obama daily on his appearances on Fox News Channel and columns on Washington Post. His pointy nose sees no end in sight...[/QUOTE]Excellent job of killing the messenger, but you didn't actually address the subject of my post, which was: MIT professor Jonathan Gruber's public comments detailing the deliberate lies and outright fraud the Obama administration engaged in to get Obamacare passed.
[QUOTE=Tiny12;442439]You can't blow this off. It represents potentially the most damning revelation in American politics since Watergate.[/QUOTE]Of course they can "[I]blow it off[/I]", just like they've blown off every other incidence of Obama's lies in office: With the cooperation of a compliant media, which is currently engaging in a news blackout on this particular story.
In contrast, can anyone imagine the media storm that would follow anything similar about the Bush administration, such as the uncovering of video of an Army general closely involved in Operation Iraqi Freedom who was boasting that the Bush administration knew there were no WMD in Iraq but they decided to sell that story in order to secure Congressional approval of the mission.
The answer is that MSNBC would put that video on a loop and play it 24/7 and the NYT would make it the headline every day for months.
(BTW, yes, I know that there are many liberals who BELIEVE that the Bush administration lied about the existence of WMD in Iraq, but I'm not arguing whether that actually happened, I'm only contrasting the media's ACTUAL response to Gruber's confession to a THEORETICAL response by the media to a NON-EXISTENT video revealing that the Bush administration lied about WMD).
Thanks,
Jax.
