“U.S. citizens living abroad are really having a hard time with their banks,” said Gerard Laures, a partner in the financial services tax division at KPMG.
Americans, take your money elsewhere!
That’s what banks around the world have been telling their U.S. customers, as they try to avoid having to comply with a new tax law due to come into force next year.
Jimmy Sexton, an American, was forced to close his checking account at Volksbank in Austria earlier this year. And Genevieve Besser, an American living in Germany, was given two months notice last year to close her securities account at ING-Diba, the German arm of Dutch bank ING.
The U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, which requires businesses to report all assets held by Americans, aims to recoup the hundreds of billions the U.S. says it loses each year from tax evasion. But it’s also leading global banks big and small to dump U.S. customers rather than wrestle with the complicated law.
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