You Should Know

Financial institutions in Japan ask the same thing. It is because Americans have to pay tax to American even when they don’t live in America. It just means there is more paperwork apparently.

Google FATCA, the US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act.

Anyone anywhere in the world that is either US citizen, or a green card holder, or in other ways related to Murica, must pay US taxes. It's insane, but the US tax system is powerful enough to bully all other countries into compliance.

Don't get me started. 🤮

american in europe here,

this is true. it's very nearly impossible to open a bank account. There is exactly one bank in Switzerland who allows americans to open accounts, UBS. So far no banks in france have allowed me to open an account, even though I have a french residency permit. This makes it nearly impossible to take loans to buy things like houses or cars. Basically life here is impossible because being american fucking sucks.

It's not because they banned us citizens. It's because the us government is one of the few ones that wants to tax stuff that their citizens earned in other countries, so banks and similar they need to report wealth and income to the government

The checkbox isn't "if you're American we can't offer you services", when you select that, then you have an extra form to fill, that's it

I hate to recommend the evil empire, but there's a very good sub on this topic called r/AmerExit. Sometimes a community is too niche to exist on the Fediverse, and one must hold one's nose and visit Reddit for certain content.

It’s not discriminatory. They don’t have any legal obligation to serve citizens of foreign countries. Citizen of USA isn’t a protected class. When they do serve American citizens it triggers a whole lot of regulatory work, and it’s understandable they don’t want to do that unless you’re a high net worth individual (ie they make enough profit to cover that cost)

This is not because anyone wants to discriminate against Americans (maybe they do, but it's unrelated to this rule), but because of rules the US forces on the rest of the world. There are special tax reporting rules for US Persons that banks have to obey if they want to be able to do business with the US at all. If you can't or don't want to follow those special rules, avoiding having US Persons as customer is the easiest way to comply.

I've worked for several Dutch banks, and US Person is a special category they have to deal with. No other nationality has this. Maybe Ethiopia? But that's easily ignored. But nobody ignores the US. They have no choice but to comply. Vote for a different tax code if you don't like it.

AFAIK this has to do with US tax law and how it applies to income earned by US citizens abroad.

I have never answered yes to this, but would be surprised if it were impossible or even considerably harder for US persons to open bank accounts. I always thought this just triggered slightly different rules for the bank?

This is one of those little catches anyone preaching to their relatives to emigrate don't say about.

I live in a third world country, and until Trump, nearly everyone wants a fucking green card thinking it's gonna make them happy.