Hi Seppia,Seppia wrote: ↑Sun May 14, 2017 2:06 amTotal is the other oil major I used to own when I was living in France, but now that I live in Italy I have sold it because of the double taxation on dividends.
There are some forms to get the extra taxes paid back, but they are an administrative pain.
Any dividend from French companies gets taxed 30% first (the French rate), then another 26% (the Italian rate).
If you live in Europe (I guess you do since Burzum is not well known in the USA - I'm a big fan by the way) you'll probably get the same double tax.
Not sure if you love in the USA, they maybe have ADRs or whatever they are called, like for royal Dutch.
One underestimated advantage of royal Dutch is their dividend reinvestment program (scrip).
Instead of paying out the dividend, they give you the equivalent value in free stocks, so basically you pay NO taxes today.
Example: say your gross dividend is 102€, and the stock goes for 25€.
If you take the cash you get 102€, minus the 15% Dutch tax, minus the 26% Italian tax, getting approx 64.16€.
If you ask for the dividend in stocks, you will get 4 stocks for 0€ added to your total, plus 2€ in cash taxed the normal way.
Thanks for such a valuable information! You guessed well, I am an spaniard, so I will suffer unfortunately the same double taxation issue. Thanks for sharing this info about the Shell's dividend reinvestment program, I will contact my broker because it seems the most tax-friendly option. I didn't give much importante to this double taxation, but as you say, it is a painful administrative work. I still have taxes to recover from Nestle since 2015...
It is a pity that for Total the reinvestment plan is only possible for french residents. Do you know more european companies with a good yield and this option?
Greetings,
Dunkelheit