EU economic chief Gentiloni to Europe's 'accidentals': 'no evidence FATCA infringes your basic bank account rights' https://t.co/m8syK6XKN6
— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) April 9, 2020
In a previous post I described America’s direct message to European Governments and to European residents who were born in America.
The message was simple, clear and unambiguous:
You either comply with the American extraterritorial taxation (and reporting) regime or you renounce!
Understandably, European citizens have looked to their Governments to protect them. As a case in point:
On February 11, 2020 Mr. Bellamy of the European Parliament posed the following question for answer, (pursuant to Rule 138), to the European Commission:
‘Accidental Americans’ is the term used to describe 300 000 Europeans who, while born in the United States, only lived there for a very short while or not at all.
Ever since the vote on the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) in 2014, they have been targeted by the US Government, which is demanding they pay US taxes on income that is paid to them outside of America. ‘Accidental Americans’ who declare their income in the countries of which they are citizens and where they reside have even had to face the prospect of having their bank accounts closed. Banks have been threatened with having to pay almost 30 % in taxes on all their financial flows transiting through the United States. This state of affairs was placed on hold by an 18-month moratorium.
Will the Commission take action to defend its fellow citizens by guaranteeing them access to a bank account and fair treatment on tax, in order to protect them from the arbitrary extraterritorial application of this law? Are there plans to renegotiate the agreement on implementation of FATCA on an EU-wide basis, with identical reciprocal sharing obligations for both sides of the Atlantic?
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2020-000816_EN.html
At its core, the question is asking whether the European Parliament would take action to defend European citizens, from the extra-territorial application of US law, to European residents who, the United States claims to be U.S. citizens. (Note that the FATCA IGAs allow the United States to define and redefine who is a U.S. citizen). Paolo Gentiloni replied as follows: