OP definetely filled a W8 ben form, although digitally, when opening an IB account. Lower than 30% witholding taxes on dividends only work for citizens of countries that have a double tax treaty with the US - and which countries will usually or always withold some more on top of the US witholding.
Residents of tax friendly countries usually get hammered with 30% - HKgers hear me i'm sure , as they don't benefit from the lower witholding tax applied to neighbouring mainland chinese.
AFAIK, no matter if there is a double treaty or not, witholding tax on dividends paid by US companies getting more than 80% of their revenues overseas can be claimed back to the IRS. Google is your friend to discover more.
I've started to check for overseas ETFs but haven't been very succesful so far, many of those ETF lack volume and have higher expense ratios than US based ones, plus if an ETF is issued in a coutry like France, some witholding tax from the french tax department on its dividends will apply, it does works like this with french individual stocks at least.
2800.hk which tracks the Hang saeng is pretty good though, and there is no witholding tax in HK. it's my main buy and hold position (and actually the only one) and I will probably increase it slowly.
