Comment by immibis
17 hours ago
The reason banks do this is that if they don't comply with US tax laws they'll be cut off from all US-based banking systems including international payments (universally conducted in USD), cut off from issuing any credit or debit cards (they are all US-based networks) and the CEO will be arrested if he ever steps foot on American soil. So basically, the US is forcing them to do this and they don't have a choice unless they want to stop being a bank. It's the same situation as dealing with US-sanctioned individuals. HTH.
yes, but that's not de-banking. it's banking being shitty.
(it's the same problem as healthcare and construction, a shitton of regulation, some competition, but no real big differences, and a lot of global dependencies [from generic pharma producers to HVAC/heatpumps and global commodity prices for construction materials and patents and prefab systems and ...], but ultimately local bottlenecks.)
obviously it sucks that FATCA compliance is hard, but it shouldn't be, and ... it's on the banking industry that it's not using some kind of common reporting backend ... oh wait, it does! (CRS!)
(okay, I'm being probably unfair here, of course it's still more work, more support requests, more papers to push, than the counterfactual, but banks already have their reporting systems integrated to the various tax and financial-authority agencies) ... and FATCA is implemented in part through intergovernmental agreements (IGAs), and the "model 1" is a reciprocal tax info sharing between the parties, the bank reports to the local tax service, and that's it.
see also https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/services/tax/articles/common-...
That's debanking. Debanking is whenever you can't have a bank account. It doesn't matter what the reason is.
if you are a US citizen you can have US bank account
HSBC UK also is available (and the account can be opened from the US remotely)
in the EU there's Santander (OpenBank), and Wise, Revolut
debanking is IMHO when simply being too poor or otherwise disadvantaged results in having no viable pathway at all for having a normal account, which here is not the case.
(and this is something the EU could/should fix by negotiating with the US, and/or by helping banks to bear the costs of compliance, etc.)