As a foreign Qualified Intermediary (QI) to the IRS, we are obliged to collect W-8 forms ("Certificate of Foreign Status of Beneficial Owner for United States Tax Withholding and Reporting") from all clients who can potentially receive US source income in the form of dividends, coupon payments or other fixed, determinable, annual or periodic (FDAP) income.
To avoid a maximum 30% tax on dividends, the clients have to present their W-8 forms to EXANTE. If the client is from a country that has a tax treaty with the US, they will be paying less than 30%. Therefore, in order to be eligible for a lower tax rate, the client must disclose their country of tax residence.
As a financial intermediary and according to terms of business, Exante acts as a tax agent for its clients. This implies that Exante is entitled to collect taxes from the income generated by its clients and perform tax payments in the name of its clients to respective tax authorities. XNT and EXT have acquired Qualified Intermediary (QI) status from the IRS (US tax authority), thus granting the company the ability to conduct the given procedure.
By request, we may provide a list of all operations that incur additional tax.