"The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act eliminated the deduction for investment expenses, starting in 2018. Fees for investment costs were deductible as a miscellaneous itemized deduction, to the extent they and other costs exceeded 2 percent of your adjusted gross income." [CNBC news article]
So, as you state, the former answer no longer applies starting in 2018. @Cindy0H points out elsewhere that some states, like CA, may still allow such a deduction on the state return.
@Aircarl1 @rv2 One of you mentioned the possibility of deducting these expenses at the time of sale, as an increase in the basis (e.g. the costs of ownership, mainly what you paid when you bought it, but including what you paid to own it after you bought it.) This is a tantalizing prospect, but I was not able to find anyone recommending it online. Historically, these fees were deducted from the dividends that the company paid, so you never saw them, and they were essentially pre-tax expenses unless the ADR custodian AND your broker caught them and then added them to your taxable dividends. However, starting in 2009 the SEC allowed the ADR (American Depositary Receipts--not sure why there's an "a" in Depositary, but the SEC has it) custodian bank to directly pass through these fees, up to once a year. As time has proceeded this has become the new standard practice. If the ADR/underlying foreign stock pays a dividend, you will likely see this fee once a year in association with one of the dividends. The ADR custodian is also collecting and remitting foreign taxes, which are a deductible expense as foreign taxes paid, and you can find these by searching online for the stock symbol and "ADR", like "TSM ADR fee".
RECOMMENDATIONS
1) Ignore it. Assuming you bought a substantially priced stock ADR, a couple pennies per share each year is negligible. (GSK cost me .002% in ADR fee this year.)
2) Don't buy foreign stocks directly. The ADR custodian is actually giving you a good deal :-).
3) Don't own ADRs in a retirement account if you can own them in a taxable account just as easily, as foreign taxes are only deductible as a credit against US taxes owed, and you won't have US taxes to deduct them against.
