In what case(s) does moving assets from a US broker to another US broker incur capital gains taxes?

External question — Personal Finance Stack Exchange Author: Franck Dernoncourt Original post: https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/153171 License: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. I read on https://www.investingsimple.com/transfer-fidelity-to-charles-schwab/ : Before you [move assets from Fidelity to Charles Schwab], you ought to be aware of potential capital gains taxes. You will also have to pay Fidelity's ACATS transfer fee. In what case(s) does moving assets from a US broker to another US broker incur capital gains taxes? I'm mostly interested in in-kind security transfer.

External answer — Personal Finance Stack Exchange Author: littleadv Original post: https://money.stackexchange.com/a/153176 License: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. I'm mostly interested in in-kind security transfer. Moving assets incur capital gains taxes if assets have to be converted into cash. This is mentioned a little bit before in the text: ...Or you may decide to liquidate some assets and transfer cash to Schwab. However, there may be capital gains tax implications if you make a profit from the sale. Your broker should be able to tell you if the holdings you have can be moved in-kind or have to be liquidated. For most retail investments you should be able to do a ACATS in-kind transfer and not trigger any tax event.