FATCA is the method of identifying suspected U.S. persons, who might be residing outside of USA–working and saving in non-American financial institutions.
As in the analysis of the other countries, one first must ask if we could dispel any myth that there are Americans in America who are sending their money to Australia — in order to avoid taxation.
Australia: The costs in Australia are estimated to be 255 million AUS for implementation, and 22.7 million AUS for each year of maintenance. Over 10 years, this totals 482.68 million AUS. With 77,000 resident US citizens (54% of whom are of dual citizenship) and known population of 24,003,100, the implementation cost is 6,270 AUS per residing U.S. citizen, 11,590 AUS per U.S.-person account, or 20.2 AUS per capita. The most representative developed country has 661 bank accounts per 1000 adults, and Australia has 82.1% population above 15 years old (adults). This yields estimated 41, 700 US-citizen bank customers in Australia, or a FATCA implementation cost of 37.3 AUS per customer.
AS 3668 FFI’s are currently registered, the estimated FATCA cost per FFI is 132,000 AUS per FFI.
The same analysis showed that costs without the IGA 477 million AUS for implementation, and 58.8 million AUS for each year of maintenance. ($1.066 billion AUS total) would have been 44,4 AUS per capita, 81.1 AUS per customer, or 13,800 AUS per resident U.S. citizen, or 25, 600 AUS per U.S.-person account . This is the only published non-IGA country cost estimation identified.
Without an IGA, the estimated FATCA cost per FFI is 291,000 AUS.
If it could have been assumed that one person had only one account, Australia still could only have said to have succeeded to locate only 30,000 of those US citizens (72% effectiveness) in its first FATCA submission to USA. (updated per commenter) It was determined that each located U.S. citizen bank account averaged 160,000 AUS—hardly those rich 1%’ers.
Australia is paying dearly to identify its minorities for the benefit of an intrusive foreign government.
p.s. Recently, it was pointed out as to where to find foreign-born population in the USA. 84,368 +/-4,780
residents of USA are counted to have been born in Australia as non-US citizen Australians. This quantity is not significant (less than 1%) in the above calculations. Data can be found at
http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_14_1YR_B05006&prodType=table
https://www.census.gov/topics/population/foreign-born/about.html
Note that, indeed, FATCA’s objective is also to locate foreign-born persons residing in USA. Like US persons living in Australia, Australians living in USA are required to file their FBARs & 8938’s and all of their other tax papers. Many of these persons have inheritances and savings and checking accounts from their former lives and for their current life. Perhaps they have summer houses or inherited family homes or checking accounts for supporting children who are studying in Australia. These persons indeed are due to report their situations to the IRS, yet they are far from “those offshore tax evaders” for which FATCA propoganda is claiming.
482,680,000 / (77,000 + 84,638 ) yields 2986 AUS per the FATCA-indicia objects (US citizens in Australia + Australian-born persons in USA) .
>FATCA is the method of identifying suspected U.S. persons, who might be residing outside of
>USA–working and saving in non-American financial institutions.
Aren’t you neglecting the rather lucrative Australians working in green cards in the US? I know at least 4 of them and likely a lot more.
The rather nice feature of this people is they likely have problematic superannuation accounts that can be taxed rather badly by the USG. Fancy getting FBAR, 8938 and 3520 penalties.
Fortunately for Australians working in the US, superannuation funds are not required to report under FATCA.
The effort of identifying US citizens in Australia was probably even less effective than estimated above. The Australian reported 30,000 accounts, not 30,000 customers, and there’s no indication of whether these are individual, corporate or trust accounts, or whether the customer address is in Australia or the US. I suspect most of the identified accounts are either recently opened with US passport for ID, or accounts with addresses in the US. I don’t know anyone personally who has received a FATCA notice from their bank.
BTW, the link to the article in The Australian did not work for me (even though my browser is logged in to their site). The easiest way to get behind their pay wall is to Google the article title : “ATO hands over bank details to US Internal Revenue Service”
Clarification. .. Superannuation are not required to tell the IRS about their US tainted account holders, but this does not absolve those account holders of their obligation to report the account on FBAR, 8938, or whatever other IRS forms that may be required.
The American Revolution really did not get rid of British rule did it?
Many people could ask pertinent questions let no stone be upturned
Democrats Abroad
Dear Jak,
Global Town Hall Update
Senator Bernie Sanders has accepted our invitation to join this Sunday’s Democrats Abroad Global Town Hall. And from Secretary Hillary Clinton’s campaign we will be joined by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Clinton’s top foreign policy advisor, Jake Sullivan. That’s this Sunday, February 21 from 12 PM -3 PM (Washington, DC time – please note the expanded time).
This is a great opportunity to hear the campaigns speak directly to Democrats Abroad and answer our questions ahead of the Democrats Abroad Global Presidential Primary. If you haven’t already RSVPed for the Global Town Hall, RSVP here now: http://www.democratsabroad.org/global_town_hall
Global Presidential Primary Reminder
Just a reminder, the Global Presidential Primary starts March 1st and runs through March 8th. Voting in the Global Primary affects how many delegates each candidate receives from Democrats Abroad – so take the opportunity to vote where you live and help make that decision.
For more information about the Global Presidential Primary, go to http://www.democrats abroad.org/gppto find out where your Voting Center is – or to download a ballot so that you can vote by mail or email.
See you on Sunday!
Julia Bryan
International Secretary
Art Schankler
International Treasurer
I have been trying to get the attention of the Australian Government to the injustices, especially those allowed on Australian soil by the tax treaty.
http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/fatca-and-australia/comment-page-20/#comment-6726208
More to come.
“Dear World,
We’ve made a new law here: WE’RE THE BOSS OF YOU”! It will cost YOU a TON of money, is discriminatory & predatory, & frankly, we don’t care. Submit to us & pay us or we WILL punish you- have a nice day!”
Signed,
The United States of America
Jane: Sadly, your “Dear World” letter from the USA pretty much sums up the situation.
I certainly hope a new president in the U.S. will asked congress to repeal this entire nonsense. So far they have been like the small African dictators who are the only other country to tax based on citizenship instead of residency……
I saw a snippet of an interview with Nicole Kidman that referenced the fact that she was born in Hawaii (see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicole_Kidman). I did a quick search to see if this fact was mentioned in previous threads here and didn’t get any hits. I don’t know whether she spends her time in Australia or the US or elsewhere but it seems like she would be viewed as Australian by Australians. If she was residing in Australia she would face the very same issues that other US-born (or otherwise US citizen) Australians do and could potentially be viewed as the Australian equivalent of Boris Johnson when pointing out the inequity of citizenship based taxation to the Australian government.