UK Ltd taxation on stocks/bonds income and real estate rent income
For stocks, bonds, ETF funds and so on - Taxed only on realised gain and losses are deductible from the gain and not from company's income. Corporate tax is calculated only after all expenses have been deducted. Not the other way around. Real estate expenses can be deducted because of repairs and maintenance.  In general all expenses related to the operation of the business can be deducted. But you cannot use expenses as willy nilly, as you assume. You cannot deduct your subscription to Playboy as an expense. Doing it is illegal and if caught, the tours to church will increase exponentially. VAT is only paid if you claim VAT on your invoices. Your situation seems quite complicated. I would suggest, get an accountant pronto. There are nuances in your situation, which an accountant only can understand and help.
That's a broad question, but I can throw some thoughts at you from personal experience.  I'm actually an Australian who has worked in a couple of companies but across multiple countries and I've found out first hand that you have a wealth of opportunities that other people don't have, but you also have a lot of problems that other people won't have. First up, asset classes. Real estate is a popular asset class, but unless you plan on being in each of these countries for a minimum of one to two years, it would be seriously risky to invest in rental residential or commercial real estate. This is because it takes a long time to figure out each country's particular set of laws around real estate, plus it will take a long time to get credit from the local bank institutions and to understand the local markets well enough to select a good location. This leaves you with the classics of stocks and bonds. You can buy stocks and bonds in any country typically. So you could have some stocks in a German company, a bond fund in France and maybe a mutual fund in Japan. This makes for interesting diversification, so if one country tanks, you can potentially be hedged in another. You also get to both benefit and be punished by foreign exchange movements. You might have made a killing on that stock you bought in Tokyo, but it turns out the Yen just fell by 15%. Doh. And to top this off, you are almost certainly going to end up filling out tax returns in each country you have made money in. This can get horribly complicated, very quickly. As a person who has been dealing with the US tax system, I can tell you that this is painful and the US in particular tries to get a cut of your worldwide income. That said, keep in mind each country has different tax rates, so you could potentially benefit from that as well. My advice? Choose one country you suspect you'll spend most of your life in and keep most of your assets there. Make a few purchases in other places, but minimize it. Ultimately most ex-pats move back to their country of origin as friends, family and shared culture bring them home. There is a clear difference between investing and gambling.  When you invest, you are purchasing an asset that has value. It is purchased in the hopes that the asset will either increase in value or generate income. This definition holds true whether you are investing in shares of stock, in real estate, or in a comic book collection. You can also purchase debt: if you loan money, you own debt that will (hopefully) be repaid and generate income.  Gambling is playing a game for chance. When you gamble, you have not purchased an asset; you have only paid to participate in a game. Some games have a degree of skill (blackjack, poker), others are pure chance (slot machine). In most gambling games, the odds are against the player and in favor of the one running the game.  Lottery tickets, without a doubt, are gambling.  There is a good article on Investopedia that discusses the difference between investing and gambling in more detail.  One thing that this article discusses is the house edge, or the advantage that the people running a gambling game have over the players.  With most casino games, the house has an advantage of between 1 and 15% over the players.  With a typical lottery, the house edge is 50%. To address some of the points made by the OP's recent edit and in the comments: I do not think the definitions of investment and gambling need to be dependent on expected value.  There can be bad investments, where the odds of a good result are low.  Similarly, there could be gambling games where the odds are in the player's favor, either due to the skill of the player or through some quirk of the game; it's still gambling. Investing is purchasing an asset; gambling is a game of chance. I do not consider a lottery ticket an asset.  When you buy a lottery ticket, you are just paying a fee to participate in a game.  It is the same as putting a coin in a slot machine.  The fact that you are given a piece of paper and made to wait a few days for the result do not change this. Assets have inherent value.  They might be valuable because of their ability to generate income (stocks, bonds, debt), their utility (precious metals, commodities, real estate), or their desirability as a thing of beauty (collectibles), for example.  A lottery ticket, however, is only an element of a game.  It has no value other than in the game. This does not really fit your liquidity requirement but consider buying a one or two room apartment to rent out with part of your savings. You will get income from it and small apartments sell quickly if you do need the money. This will help offset the negative interest from the rest. One downside is that other people have the same idea at the moment and the real estate prices are inflated somewhat. I think this question is very nearly off-topic for this site, but I also believe that a basic understanding of the why the tax structure is what it is can help someone new to investing to understand their actual tax liability. The attempt at an answer I provide below is from a Canadian & US context, but should be similar to how this is viewed elsewhere in the world. First note that capital gains today are much more fluid in concept than even 100 years ago. When the personal income tax was first introduced [to pay for WWI], a capital gain was viewed as a very deliberate action; the permanent sale of property. Capital gains were not taxed at all initially [in Canada until 1971], under the view that income taxes would have been paid on income-earning assets all along [through interest, dividends, and rent], and therefore taxing capital gains would be a form of 'double-taxation'. This active, permanent sale was also viewed as an action that an investor would need to work for. Therefore it was seen as foolish to prevent investors from taking positive economic action [redistributing their capital in the most effective way], simply to avoid the tax. However today, because of favourable taxation on capital gains, many financial products attempt to package and sell capital gains to investors. For example, many Canadian mutual funds buy and sell investments to earn capital gains, and distribute those capital gains to the owners of the mutual fund. This is no longer an active action taken by the investor, it is simply a function of passive investing. The line between what is a dividend and what is a capital gain has been blurred by these and similar advanced financial products. To the casual investor, there is no practical difference between receiving dividends or capital gain distributions, except for the tax impact. The notional gain realized on the sale of property includes inflation. Consider a rental property bought in 1930 for $100,000, and sold in 1960 for $180,000, assuming inflation between 1930 and 1960 was 70%. In 1960 dollars, the property was effectively bought for 170k. This means the true gain after accounting for inflation is only $10k. But, the notional gain is $80k, meaning a tax on that capital gain would be almost entirely a tax on inflation. This is viewed by many as being unfair, as it does not actually represent true income. I will pause to note that any tax on any investment at all, taxes inflation; interest, for example, is taxed in full even though it can be almost entirely inflationary, depending on economic conditions. A tax on capital gains may restrict market liquidity. A key difference between capital gains and interest/rent/dividends, is that other forms of investment income are taxed annually. If you hold a bond, you get taxed on interest from that bond. You cannot gain value from a bond, deferring tax until the date it matures [at least in Canada, you are deemed to accrue bond interest annually, even if it is a 0 coupon bond].  However, what if interest rates have gone down, increasing the value of your bond, and you want to sell it to invest in a business? You may choose not to do this, to avoid tax on that capital gain. If it were taxed as much as regular income, you might be even more inclined to never sell any asset until you absolutely have to, thus restricting the flow of capital in the market. I will pause here again, to note that laws could be enacted to minimize capital gains tax, as long as the money is reinvested immediately, thus reducing this impact.  Political inertia / lobbying from key interests has a significant impact on the tax structure for investments. The fact remains that the capital gains tax is most significantly an impact on those with accrued wealth. It would take significant public support to increase capital gain tax rates, for any political party to enact such laws. When you get right down to it, tax laws are complex, and hard to push in the public eye. The general public barely understands that their effective tax rate is far lower than their top marginal tax rate. Any tax increases at all are often viewed negatively, even by those who would never personally pay any of that tax due to lack of investment income. Therefore such changes are typically made quietly, and with some level of bi-partisan support. If you feel the capital gains tax rules are illogical, just add it to the pile of such tax laws that exist today. "Here's a link to an online calculator employing the Discounted Cash Flow method:  Discounted Cash Flows Calculator.  Description: This calculator finds the fair value   of a stock investment the   theoretically correct way, as the   present value of future earnings. You   can find company earnings via the box   below.   [...] They also provide a link to the following relevant article:  Investment Valuation: A Little Theory.  Excerpt: A company is valuable to stockholders   for the same reason that a bond is   valuable to bondholders: both are   expected to generate cash for years   into the future. Company profits are   more volatile than bond coupons, but   as an investor your task is the same   in both cases: make a reasonable   prediction about future earnings, and   then ""discount"" them by calculating   how much they are worth today. (And   then you don't buy unless you can get   a purchase price that's less than the   sum of these present values, to make   sure ownership will be worth the   headache.)   [...]" You only pay tax on the capital gain of the bond, not the principal, unless the source of the money for the principal was gain from another investment, if that makes sense.   In other words, if you bought the bond with income earned from your job, that money was already taxed as income, so it isn't subject to taxation again when you redeem the bond.  On the other hand, if you cashed out of one investment and used those proceeds to buy a bond, then the entire amount might be taxable. I can't find anything specifically about holding international real estate as a US taxpayer, but the act of transferring the money to (I presume) an account of yours in Italy, and any other associated accounts, will trigger requirements for reporting under FBAR and FACTA. Even with this, it is primarily a reporting requirement. I do not believe you will incur any additional taxes unless you do rent out the property (or allow someone not a reported dependent to make use of the property). Note that if you do not report and should, the penalties are quite steep, so please do comply. NOTE: I am not a tax expert, nor a lawyer, nor an accountant, nor an agent of the IRS. Please consult one or all of these before making any decisions. Generally bank transfers are not in themselves liable for tax. However making profit generally is taxed either as income, capital gains or some combination of the two. It seems that in the UK cryptocurrencies are being treated like other currencies for tax purposes and that trading profits/losses may count as either income or capital gains depending on the circumstances. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/revenue-and-customs-brief-9-2014-bitcoin-and-other-cryptocurrencies/revenue-and-customs-brief-9-2014-bitcoin-and-other-cryptocurrencies However I do not know how to unravel whether particular trading activity would count as income or capital gains. I would suggest gathering as much information as possible and then discussing this with an accountant.