Currently, I have about 100k USD invested with IBLLC, and about 40k USD (including iDeCo and NISA) with Rakuten (again very simple, just emaxis slim whole world stocks and government bond indices mutual funds). The reason why I invested with IBLLC is that I was (and am) not sure whether I will stay in Japan long-term. So in the case I leave Japan, the advantage is that I would not need to sell and re-buy everything, but only the Rakuten part of the portfolio. Even now I am not sure I will stay here "forever". It's pretty clear I will stay for the next 4-5 years. After that, if I would need to put a percentage, I would say there is 70% chance I stay
I see two options now:
- Sell everything I have with IBLLC, transfer the moeny to Japan and buy corresponding Japanese mutual funds. How to do this best would be another question. Since there will be a delay of several days between selling and re-buying, I guess to smooth out market movements, it would be best to do it in several chunks over the course of a few weeks.
Pro: Easier, everything is in one place. Also no need to worry about Japanese tax declarations in the future because they to tax withholding automatically.
Con: Need to sell everything in case I leave Japan. Might need to file a tax return for the current year because I sold shares outside Japan. Need to pay more tax in the future because currently, the IBLLC positions are a loss. - Transfer the IBLLC positions to another broker. I am thinking about swissquote.
Pro: No need to sell IBLLC positions, they can be transferred. No need to sell if I leave Japan.
Con: Swissquote is a somewhat expensive broker (they charge ~200 USD per year account fee). Possible tax complications in the future (ETFs are accumulating though, so I believe as long as I don't sell, there is no need to file a tax return in Japan).