Hello all, sorry for my absence.
I have read all of these articles and more that have been coming out as of late.
From what I understand what is going to happen is this… When you open a new account at a bank, you will be asked to sign away your banking rights with a W9 or other document after this law is signed. Standard Charter is already asking US persons to sign it.
If you are already a customer of the bank, what is going to happen is this you either sign it or you don’t, and if you do not sign it, your account will either be closed, or as I have been told, the bank cannot force you to sign it, however, what they are going to do is put all the non-cooperative people together and submit all of us as a whole to the IRS without a name. If the IRS comes back and asks for a name, then the bank is just going to give it to them regardless if you sign the document or not. Sounds overly fair and just doesn’t it? Don’t sign, but still have your data sent to the IRS illegally… hmmmm I highly doubt they are going to close our accounts, but some banks might pull this. And as you can see from my letters to the FSC there will be nothing anyone can do to help us. I guess the IRS wants to force us to do business in cash and not pay taxes after all, God bless the IRS! NOT!
So, what we have to do is this… keep our accounts below US$50,000 and then we have no problem. That is 50,000 PER BANK folks. Not per account. So if you three accounts in Land Bank and the total is over 50,000 start moving money.
Whatever all of you are going to do you had better do it before June. This is the information I have. Best to do it this month to avoid any problems. That includes opening any new accounts and moving money around. Most expats probably don’t have 50,000 in Taiwan, but some do, so if you do, and don’t want to be harassed open accounts now and move money around.
The reality is that no one truly knows what is going to happen once Taiwan decides to sign their whole country’s sovereignty away.
CALL your senators and talk with their staff. I spoke to mine yesterday and like most of the world, they had NEVER heard about FATCA and from the guys voice on the phone he was annoyed by such things and told me this information would be passed to this superiors in Washington. Where it will go from there, no one knows. Forget about writing to them, you just get a form letter in return that says that everyone should pay for bridges and roads… Yeah right, why should I have to pay for that stuff when I am not even using it now. Welcome to the US!!
So yes flakman banks have to get customers permission, however, they can refuse to open a new account for you and perhaps not provide you such great banking service if you don’t sign it. But I will be the first to day, I’m not signing jack squat! Let’em try to close my accounts! I would advise others to politely decline their calling for you to sign anything either. These banks will be given authority to spy on you after you sign that, even without signing it they are still spying on you, but still. I’m not signing anything.
sorry. haha, I actually found out about this many days ago when it was released, but I hadn’t had time to come here to post it. and it is very much so highway robbery. Ridiculous.