dbd33

I think I'll avoid any such trouble by:

- not telling the bank I'm an American

- not having $50,000

Easy, really.

MarylandNed

Yes, I have read it.

When it comes to actually implementing this, identification and reporting are not necessarily intertwined. The fact that the banks won't report balances under $50k doesn't mean that they won't try to identify "US persons" ahead of time. In fact, it makes sense that they would so that if the balance reaches $50k, they can quickly and automatically trigger the reporting mechanism. That's the way I would expect the system to be designed. Anyone not already flagged as a US person might trigger another audit if their balance reaches reportable levels. Anyone who holds a joint account with a US person is also affected. Same goes for anyone who co-owns a property or business with a US person.

Also, this affects every customer regardless of whether they are a US person or not - or whether they hold joint accounts or co-own a property or business with a US person. It's going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars to implement FATCA. That cost won't be eaten by the banks because that's not what banks do. They will pass this cost on to all of their customers one way or another.

Steve_

All I can say is the first person I asked was the bank teller and she told me she uses it to check if people are lying about who they are, presumably based on their appearance or their accent. Which I thought sounded a bit like racial profiling but anyway they must have it for a lot of people for her to be able to say that.

I think we all know there is going to be a headline along the lines of "pensioner has money seized by IRS because bank told them" at some point in the next few months. Even if it is only one person.

dbd33 has made me think it's more likely actually because if they export the data into CSV or whatever and then run an SQL query and produce a CSV off that, someone at some point is going to make a mistake and include Joe Blow with $5 on account who happened to use his US passport 20 years ago to open an account and never thought about it. And then the CSV gets uploaded to the FATCA portal.

Novocastrian

Your credibility as being a non-frothing loon is severely compromised.

Steve_

Why because I'm now fully frothing or because I'm not a loon?

Steve_

Mmm, anyway, check out the new IRS form W-BEN (which you basically have to fill in if you are the non-resident holder of a US bank account and various other things) which has been redesigned to comply with FATCA. Have a read of the fun instructions: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/iw8ben.pdf

The question on your foreign tax ID has been revised, used to be "optional" now it says to provide it if it is a US office of an FFI, which I assume means say, a US branch of a Canadian bank.

So basically they're asking for your SIN now to make it easier to identify you. And tie you together with your CRA records which they have access to under the tax treaty.

So if you say you're non-resident on this form and they can tie you together with anything they've got that says you're a US person, mmm.

JAJ

The instructions actually say:
http://www.irs.gov/instructions/iw8ben/ch02.html

Line 6.
If you are providing this Form W-8BEN to document yourself with respect to a financial account that you hold at a U.S. office of a financial institution, provide the tax identifying number (TIN) issued to you by your jurisdiction of tax residence unless:

You have not been issued a TIN, or
The jurisdiction does not issue TINs.

If you have not provided your jurisdiction of residence TIN on line 6, provide your date of birth in line 8.

Note in particular, the use of the term financial institution as opposed to foreign financial institution. It applies to any U.S. bank.

What they want to do is identify the (Canadian) SIN of any Canadian resident with a U.S. account, (Australian) Tax File Number of any Australian resident with a U.S. account, and so on. This will likely be transferred to the CRA and other tax authorities.

Steve_

Great.

Steve_

In the news today: http://www.calgaryherald.com/busines...432/story.html

The comment about CGT is wrong I'm pretty sure, the US-Canada tax treaty says "resident" and clearly she's a resident of Canada.