Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act

And this is the reporting by foreign banks of accounts held by American citizens in those countries.

I think it's called FATCA or something like that.

Talk to us about that because it seems as though the U.S. government has gone to those financial institutions, those banks in Canada, England, Argentina, Australia, whatever, and essentially said, look, if you have any clients who are American citizens, you better make sure that the interest that they earn on deposits held at your bank are reported to us, to the IRS.

Is that what FATCA is? And I understand that for a lot of Americans living overseas, That's that's particularly uncomfortable.

Absolutely.

FATCA is is the game changer in the tax world for the expat.

I personally believe it's some of the most ground shattering legislation for tax, you know, in my lifetime, if not beyond that.

And yes, to your point earlier in reference to the interview, it is ridiculous, but we prep individuals.

And I had done some tax work during my university years, and so it was always an interest to me.

And I just happened to land in Switzerland, in Zurich, when FATCA was blowing up.

Oh.

And so all the banks and all the Big Four-

was there because we've had several tailwinds, right? Structural reforms moving slowly but coming through.

We've had the FATCA graylist removal.

We had a credit upgrade.

We're in a much better fiscal position.

Man erkennt, die neue EU-Regelung CRD sechs ist zwar kein generelles Verbot für EU-Bürger, Konten im Ausland zu halten, aber es ist zweifellos eine sehr starke Einschränkung für EU-Ansässige, die Konten bei Banken außerhalb der EU nutzen wollen.

Die EU-Regelung CRD sechs hat Ähnlichkeiten mit dem US-amerikanischen FATCA, kurz für Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act.

Das Hauptziel von FATCA ist die Verhinderung von Steuerhinterziehung.

Auslandsbanken müssen Daten an die US-Steuerbehörde IRS melden.

Viele ausländische Banken, auch in der EU, nehmen daher keine US-Personen mehr an oder haben längst bestehende Konten, weil die Meldepflicht und Compliance-Kosten zu hoch sind, gekündigt.

Bei CRD sechs ist zu befürchten, dass viele Nicht-EU-Banken EU-Ansässigen keine Konten mehr anbieten werden, weil sie sonst eine teure lizenzierte Zweigstelle in jedem betroffenen EU-Land brauchen, die Kosten der Geschäftsbeziehungen für die betroffenen Banken zu hoch werden.

Was CRD sechs und FATCA gemeinsam haben- Beide Regelungen greifen über die eigenen Grenzen hinaus und zwingen ausländische Banken, sich an die Regeln des eigenen Rechtskreises, den USA beziehungsweise der Europäischen Union, zu halten.

Warum überhaupt so eine Regel wie CRD6? Nun, Banken in der EU wird lästige Konkurrenz im Ausland vom Halse gehalten.

But in the past, there wasn't as much shared information, and so people did a better job of hiding that.

And it seems like now with FATCA, uh, the foreign, um, account reporting requirement out of the US, it's encouraged the Europeans to start reporting bank account information to each other, not just domestically.

And this has created more maybe of a, a culture of information sharing that now will reach a new level with AMLA.

Is that a, a functional way to look at it? Or...

So I've spoken to Tom Zaky Stell, your colleague, a few times about the unique rules for Americans that they need to abide by abroad.

Uh, FATCA is one of those acronyms that comes to mind, and how that complicates things where you might think you can just up and move anywhere without an issue, right?

Right.

Right.

Uh, yeah, that's ...

FATCA is a reporting that other countries are required to perform for the United States, and a lot of the banks don't wanna do business with Americans abroad because they have to do this reporting.

So that, that's a problem.

Uh, the other problem-

Then we've got into multilateralism with CRS, and to, to a lesser degree...

I mean, would you call FATCA multilateral or bilateral? I mean, I suppose-

No, that's-

... it's bilateral

Yeah.

It's a single, it's a single system.

Yeah, it's a single system with, uh, I guess nodes that you turn on to, um, activate relationships, and in the same way I would say FATCA is, it's bilateral in its application but, you know, we have three separate types of, um, FATCA agreement, don't we?

Yeah.