About DivAtlas
DivAtlas is a one-person reference on what non-US investors actually keep from US dividends: dividend withholding rates for 84 countries and territories, the forms that set them, and the tax your own country adds on top.
It started with a form I didn’t know had expired. Nobody tells you. The broker simply reverts to the default rate, and my next US dividend arrived with 30% withheld instead of the 10% my treaty allows. Getting the money back took months. Understanding why it happened took longer, and most of what I found along the way was either written for Americans or wrong.
This site is the reference I wanted back then. The math is always shown.
Who writes this
One person. A mainland China tax resident who holds US-listed dividend stocks and files a W-8BEN, the same as most people reading this. I am an investor working from primary sources, not a licensed tax adviser. There is no editorial team and no firm behind the site. When a page says “I checked,” it means one person sat with the actual treaty text.
How these pages are made
Every rate and rule is checked against primary sources: IRS Tax Treaty Table 1, the treaty text itself, and the foreign statute or guidance in question. The atlas names the edition of that table behind every rate, and each page carries the date it was last verified. Pages are reviewed once a year, and sooner whenever the underlying rules change. Example numbers are reproducible, and projections come from this site’s own calculators with their assumptions stated. If you spot an error, email me. Corrections go on the page. The full working rules, including what happens when sources conflict: How We Verify.
What you can do here
- Check the withholding rate your country actually gets in the dividend tax rates table.
- Run the annual drag on a real position, tax included, through the withholding calculator.
- Watch after-tax dividends compound over decades in the DRIP snowball calculator.
- See how close your portfolio sits to the $60,000 US estate-tax threshold with the estate tax exposure checker.
- Read what happens when the paperwork fails: what an expired W-8BEN actually costs, or the estate tax most foreign investors never see coming.
- Watch the same gap compound: one year of treaty rates on $100, then thirty years of it on a snowball.
What this site is not
Not tax, legal or investment advice. I can’t tell you what to do with your own portfolio. Cross-border tax outcomes depend on your facts, and the rules change. Verify the details that apply to your situation with a qualified professional before acting.
How it makes money
It doesn’t, yet. No ads, no sponsored posts, no affiliate links, no newsletter and nothing to buy. If a page ever carries an affiliate link, it will say so on that page, and the math on that page will not change to suit it.
Contact
Corrections and questions go to contact@divatlas.com. Country guides so far: China, Japan, the UK, Germany, Singapore and Hong Kong. Country requests: if your country isn’t covered yet, tell me and it moves up the queue.
The forms are boring. The money is real.
Last reviewed: August 31, 2026. This page is reviewed annually, or sooner if anything on it stops being true.