11 thoughts on “In Africa, #FATCA is mainly unheard of”

1. It’s important to get FATCA moving down there. ROund up all of the names of US persons on USB memory sticks so that they can be kidnapped or shot in shopping malls. Get them out of the critical international oil markets where USA should have had presence. Eliminate their personal businesses with thousands of hours of IRS paperwork so that the only way they can succeed is to stop being an American.

2. At 0.19% of GNI, the USA is one of stingiest developed countries when it comes to overseas development assistance. Only countries in trouble like Greece and Portugal give less. Now they are applying a Byzantine set of regulations on the poorest countries in the world that have no realistic chance of complying. Looks like they are going to claw back even that 0.19%.

3. Americans living in places like Africa do not consume US public goods and services like highways, bridges, railroads, electricity, hospitals, schools, fire & police services, medicare, medicaid, unemployment benefits, food stamps etc; they only get to use whatever public goods & services that are available where they live. And in places like Africa, there is not very much available.

   In other words, citizenship based taxation (CBT) requires Americans abroad to pay for the public goods and services that Homelanders get to enjoy even if such goods and services where they live are non-existent or in very poor condition.

   Citizenship based taxation is a modern day form of slavery. It is punishment for having the audacity of leaving the Homeland.

   Congress is obviously in no hurry to reform such an injustice. So at this point in time, renouncing US citizenship is the only way for individual Americans living abroad to end the misery that has been forced upon them.

   Hopefully, the situation will change for the better in the future. But until then — sauve qui peut!

4. They’re still ahead of other “frontier markets” like Mongolia, which hasn’t been discussing FATCA at all. Rather surprising, since all the usual suspects like E&Y, Deloitte, etc. have offices there.

   One big issue that Americans in Africa & the Middle East share: unlike in Europe or Latin America, most of them won’t be able to naturalise even if they wanted to. The lucky ones with Italian or Irish ancestry can go pick up their new EU passports from the nearest consulate, the rich ones can go buy Austrian or Montenegrin passports from Henley & Partners, and everyone else is stuck.

5. Makes even more ridiculous Robert Stack’s claim that nations are clamouring to sign up to FATCA when so many are only beginning to wake up to it.

6. @bubblebustin, it is sad that the US government fears honesty. Such really declines my confidence in America’s future. Yet, at least non-US FATCA advocates are more honest, such as this one:

   It is fair to say that FATCA has not been well received, at least outside the US. There are few FFIs and NFFEs, at least of any significant size, that have the luxury of being able to ignore FATCA on the basis that they have no US investments (whether or not they also have US account holders or interested persons).

   http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=43bf5270-4049-4f14-977c-5552fb9f83ce

   Pretty much the entire world opposes FATCA except for the majority of the American people living in America.

7. Talked to a guy who works for CIBC nearly two years ago about FATCA. His response was, “Fucking Americans”. Yeah, the banks may smile at the Americans when in these discussions, but behind their backs they are seething.

8. My banker reserved his opinion of the US government, but said FATCA’s “a mess”. I would find it hard to muster up any admiration for the creators of a mess. I’ve often wondered how may chairs have been thrown behind closed doors over FATCA.

9. From the lexology article:

   Despite the criticism (of which there has been much) there is a school of thought that the US, being the only country that could unilaterally impose a regime like FATCA, has taken the first, important step along a path that will see a proliferation of FATCA-like arrangements in the years to come.

   Over the summer, the IRS confirmed that in addition to those countries which had already signed an IGA, it was in negotiation with a further 80 countries. Not all IGAs will be reciprocal (requiring US institutions to also report information), but it is clear that many countries are now giving serious thought to ways in which they can beef up their tax information exchange arrangements with other countries.

   What BS. *None* of the IGAs signed to date bind the US to anything approaching real reciprocity. Treasury simply does not have the authority to do that. At best, some form of reciprocity is a goal to work towards. Perhaps he’s mixing up the meaning of “not all” and “none”.

   Additionally, the author makes it sound like the US is acting almost out of a sense of noblesse oblige in imposing FATCA. Nothing could be further from the truth. The US is imposing FATCA in order to benefit the US (as it sees it). The US could not care less what happens in the rest of the world.

10. @tdott

    Absolutely correct. When building a coalition, extortion undermines any claims of being a team player.

11. @tdott, The US is imposing unilateral economic sanctions on any country’s FFIs that fail to obey their regulations. That’s how international tax specialist Prof. Allison Christians put it.

    What you say is correct.