The majority of RBC clients are not U.S. persons and, in most cases, FATCA should have little impact. If you have an existing account and there is an indication that you may be a U.S. person, or if you are opening a new account, RBC may ask you to provide additional information or documentation to demonstrate that you are not a U.S. person. (link mine)
From the RBC’s FATCA page.
Hat tip: Suki
@KalC
Just my point. FATCA is ineffective in finding ALL US persons holding foreign bank accounts because it allows too many USP’s to fall through the cracks, while at the same time targets too many innocent people. Therefore it is a preposterous waste of energy, resources, and an inconvenience for many. It’s not about how many USP’s can get away undetected, it’s how many they catch that will make FATCA worthwhile. Journalists do a better job than FATCA will ever do.
@KalC
I’ll create an example. A gazillionaire US citizen who was born in Canada manages to escape detection because he has no ‘indicia’. His bank accounts show balances that exceed $1M and the bank does a manual search which still reveals no indicia. Even if he was interviewed by the bank and asked if he was American, he may not even know he is an answer “no”. The IRS and Treasury may miss the opportunity to tax and penalize this individual into bankruptcy, yet Joe Blow with a US birthplace gets nailed.
KalC and bubblebustin,
We are seeing FATCA may not affect every country — if some stand up to the US; neither will it affect every USP abroad. Some will be among the lucky countries and some among the lucky supposed USP’s who are able to escape detection of their sin of US indicia.
What’s the point? Why doesn’t the US just swallow their pride or whatever holds them back from fairness and just leave citizenship-based taxation to one country — Eritrea? Leave finding the huge tax evaders to those like the journalists who have banded together for this purpose. More cost effective for the honest tax payers, the banks, the governments. And we won’t have to get our unbelievable story across to those who form their views of justice from media sound-bytes. FATCA will not be the effective answer — as I see it will do nothing beyond the already in-place methods.
Let’s just say that any test that produces as many false positives and false negatives that FATCA will is not worthwhile.
Re the news from BC that RBC is replacing long-term Canadian IT workers with temporary foreign workers (today they are denying this, but read the wording carefully … and do you believe them anyway?):
If anyone is under any doubts that our chartered banks, at least RBC for sure, would gleefully throw anyone under any bus if it reduces their costs or improves their bottom line or keeps them out of trouble with IRS, think again.
Let the transfer of accounts to credit unions begin … or as one blogger said on the CBC story site, now’s a good time for the public to test that “too big to fail” horsecrap ….