non USA webmasters... do you use foreign US dollar accounts?

I always get confused about other countries currency


it should all be US dollars everywhere

Yes it is a very good idea due to the flucuation of our dollar

Hmmm, the difference on the example I worked out is less than 0.5% Maybe it's not worth the extra hassle...

I;m selling all the USD dollars and buying EURO!

HA!

in approx 2 yrs it will be the DOW 5000 ..... thanks BUSH ( you fucking donkey! )

Rowan - our accountant who seemed to be fairly switched on told us that the easiest way to deal with overseas currency that was earned but not brought into the country was not to declare it until it did hit the country.

Of course the down side to that is that if you pay any of your expenses from that money in whatever overseas account it might be in, you can't then claim it as a business deduction come tax time.

Did your bank tell you what the amount was that they required you to deposit into that foreign currency account just to open it?

ROWAN - what's ur IM details

Rowan I too am in Aussie and wanted to talk au related biz stuff with you - whats ur AIM ICQ or MSN?

Rowan

Damn - said it didnt post the first time and there it is!

hehe, a world currency would be great

Rowan, stick with Epassporte, forget the troubles ;)

Yep we use US$ funds accounts for Wildcash. We get money in from processors and keep it in US funds then pay out to affilates promptly via wire transfer, epasporte & paypal. works good and stops us from losing $1000's in bank % fees of double converting the money

I've said it in another thread already, but epass has a worse conversion rate than my banks cash rate. In other words, from most $ in my hand to least...

1. wires (will get this rate with a US dollar account)
2. cheques (currently get this rate with my AU dollar account)
3. cash
4. epass


The Other Steve: At the moment my income is declared as the Australian dollars my bank pays, because the USD cheques have no fixed value until they're deposited and converted... setting up a US dollar account is likely to complicate things, since I'll be doing that extra section on overseas income/investments or similar.

Here's the info I got from Westpac about the account:

- No setup fee or minimum balance.
- $AUD15 fee for deposit of up to 8 cheques of the same currency and payee. Deposits are converted on the spot but take 7 working days to end up in the account.
- $AUD8 for inbound teletype transfers
- $AUD50/mo maintenance fee if equivalent average AUD balance is between $0-$5000 (I didn't get the other rates, but the fee is obviously lower for higher balances)
- Transfer between US dollar account and a standard AUD Westpac account is done at teletype rates (see http://www.westpac.com.au/forms/fore...rm&StartPage=2 )
- No online or automated phone banking access to the account. To find out your balance or any other details you have to call during business hours and ask a human...

I'm not sure whether the small conversion advantage outweighs the disadvantages and the extra work that will be required to get AUD funds into my account. Since there's no opening minimum it won't hurt to try.

I considered retaining a USD account at RBOC for a while, but it never really yielded any benefits for the cost, plus the downside of inertia (leaving the money parked in the account rather than getting it converted on receipt of payment) would have resulted in a substantial drop in my real revenue.

If I did a lot of business travel to the US or paid a lot of bills/made purchases in US funds, it'd probably have more use to me. As it is right now, the faster I can pull USD and switch it to CDN, the more money I make.

USD - EURO is about 30% difference

I just keep an account in the US as well as Europe.

When in that states, I use the US... or when I buy US.

You can always get it out through a money machine if you need it.

I'm in a similar situation. I have a home loan which has a feature called an offset account - any balance in your savings account is deducted from what you owe on the loan when calculating the interest. This has two direct benefits...

1. It's effectively the same as a savings account paying 6.77% interest.
2. The deduction is seamless and applied before interest is calculated, which means that the interest 'earned' doesn't count as income (it's a saving rather than earning), and is therefore not taxed.

As an example: if I parked $20k in there for a year I would make/save $1396 in interest (including compounding). If that was fully taxed then I'd have to give the govt $656.12 of that... but it's not taxed at all so I get the full $1396.

So it's definitely in my best interests (ha! ha!) to get those USD funds into my AUD account as quickly as possible. A better currency conversion rate along the way helps, which is the point of this thread.

I'm loosing so much money from Dollar to Euro convertions...its fucking unbelivable dammit

1 US$ account with bank of china................and epassporte for ATM .