RE: To CHANGE or Not to Change - That is the question.
Sorry to say, but Europe and the rest of the world has a vaguely similar version to FATCA.
It is called CRS. Unlike FATCA it does not have the US principal of “You and your bank are both guilty till you prove you are innocent”. CRS merely requires financial institutions to report a tax payer’s income back to his home country, but doe not make the bank “guilty” for doing so. FATCA requires non-US banks to report the US person’s income to the USA, AND to prove he declared that income. It is the latter which makes the bank guilty as it is difficult to prove such a thing.
For obvious reasons banks outside the USA now refuse to bank for Americans in their country. If you are French, living in France, but your passport says you were born in the USA, then good luck in finding a French bank to open your account.
Banks don’t like billion dollar fines because they are considered guilty just because they are too disorganised to prove otherwise. (The “guilty” crime is that of assisting an American who did not declare his income.) It’s hard for the global banks to prove which American paid his tax and which didn’t. In the absence of that evidence the bank is “guilty”.
The USA has on the other hand refused to be recipricol on either FATCA or CRS meaning that it is now the number 1 place in the world for tax-evaders, criminals, drug-dealers, despots (except the Russian ones), and Mafia to hide their ill-gotten gains. Neither FATCA nor CRS apply to US banks in the USA.
Many Americans living overseas are understandably trying to renounce their US citizenship. A particularly difficult thing to do, even if you are American by accident. (Your mum was on holiday in the USA when you were born).
You make some excellent points, @swissclive. I really appreciate your giving such great insight into the bank's point of view in it all that helps to balance some of my own perspective. I love learning new aspects to things. There is so much more to all of this too. I've accumulated a huge digital library on this subject and so many areas this connects into. I started writing a book here practically and then realized I might as well go ahead and write a full post on it. So I'll hold my rant for there. LOL. Stay tuned for the next exciting adventure... :)
It’s worth mentioning that banks in North Korea, Iran and China have all agreed to comply with the US FATCA law, i.e. to verify if any of their clients have US “indicia”, such as a US mobile number or making regular payments to the USA etc, and then to investigate those clients, and also reporting them to the US IRS and DOJ if evidence of not being American is not obtained. “Prove you are not American!”
Wow, you really know your stuff on this subject. That's interesting on the banks in N. Korea and Iran. That might explain why things seems to be simmering down with both of them. And I suppose Syria is not cooperating. Thus, the war there.
I found some good banking data on this, which does verify it. I want to speak to some bankers and American friends too. It's really insane the whole thing and shows the level of bankruptcy the US really is in. The world should be a lot more alarmed by this situation and almost no body speaks of it. I guess that's because its so overbearing and over stepping beyond what seems logical. Which leads to the question of do I really want to poke a stick at this beast. Probably many Protestants go wild with calling it the beast of Revelations and I'm not too sure they're wrong either. My angle on the past history leading up to it all and the cover of the Economist magazine in 1988 stating, "Get ready for a new world currency" with the date of 2018 on the coin seems far more possible than ever now.
Indeed Im amazed by @swissclive knowledge ....
Actually, I am not sure if made a mistake about the banks in Iran and North Korea. I just looked on the FATCA website and Korea and Iran as countries aren’t listed. I am abolutely certain that some of their banks were on the list 2 or 3 years ago - there were a number of North Korean banks listed, it was 3 then, I think, but, perhaps the list was of banks which promised so participate, and maybe it never happened. The trouble is the latest list of banks from the website is crashing on me, so I can’t check if the banks are there, even if the country itself is not.
You can try and download the list of financial institutions who have already agreed to cooperate with the US FATCA law here: https://www.irs.gov/businesses/corporations/fatca-foreign-financial-institution-ffi-prior-months-lists
Haven’t checked for Syrian banks or the country.
Was that really a 1988 Economist cover about a new world currency? I seem to remember seeing an economist cover with something like that a few days ago. I forget where, but from memory it was next to an article about Warren Buffett no longer excluding bitcoin on the grounds of “I don’t understand it”, so I assumed, without looking at the date, that it was either a “mock-up” or something more recent than 1988.
If it was indeed 1988, then maybe they were talking about ECUs or SDRs. Interesting that they put 2018 on the coin.... maybe it was a bit of Nostrodamas forecasting which can be proven correct. I.e. In the randomness of hundreds of “so-called” forecasts and trillions of events, there will always be a few matches.
Anyway, if the coin was meant to be the future Euro, they should have put a hole in the middle.
Wait to you see some of the other data I have on that 1988 Economist cover... It ties so much together. I guess I'll do the story at some point. I just gotta edit it... :) There are many ways I could run with it, given the breadth and depth of it all. I'm just struggling with such poor results on these last 2 posts.
The current system all seems to be running it's course sometime in the next few years. I truly believe they will replace this system sometime in the near future. Who knows exactly when. There are a lot of variables, especially blockchain technology and AI together. It's my view that the right side of politics is doing everything they can to keep things going positive at least for the next 2 years to try and reelect Trump, and are planning to utilize these new technologies for the new system. Probably more eyes are on China now to play a key role in it all, especially given they have already said they are working to create their own cryptocurrency backed by gold and oil.
One of the many interesting altcoins to me is Stellar. IBM, who is probably their largest partner, released just in the last month that among many big projects about to come into play, that the chances are very strong that central banks are coming out with their own digital currencies on the Stellar network soon. Stellar said they will become known to most everyone sometime this year, as they roll out their projects and joint ventures. And so the plot thickens... :)
Stellar: must look into it..
Currency reset: not if, but when.
The currency reset is not what everyone here is predicting. Its 100 times better for the world. The goldbugs will be holding the wrong thing.
Here are the details on the 1988 article:
COVER: “GET READY FOR A WORLD CURRENCY”
Title of article: Get Ready for the Phoenix
Source: Economist; 01/9/88, Vol. 306, pp 9-10
A full copy of the text can be found here
They did mention the SRDs when they said:
The phoenix, of course was just used as a metaphor, but it sounds much like the Euro experiment, which seems challenged these days.
In many ways they missed it with:
FATCA and CRS seem to have gone backwards, making things worse than ever in so many ways.
They closing paragraph said:
Thank you @swissclive for such an informative reply. I never knew about it.
Such a valuable comment.
This is just so confusing.