If you want to open a bank account in the United States, you walk into a branch of a bank and simply state that objective. “Hello,” you say as you take a seat across from the helpful banker, “I’d like an account with you.” Or, easier yet, you fill out some forms online and save […]
We Americans have it rough when it comes to taxes. The Big Bad Wolf of the world’s financial arena—the IRS—calls our neck of the woods home. Feared worldwide these days… by banks and financial institutions as well as ordinary citizens from California to Switzerland… the U.S. Internal Revenue Service has become the hunting dog for […]
Last year, Lief hosted his Global Asset Protection and Wealth Summit in Panama City. On day one of the conference, he and I had lunch with banker friends in town. One, with 30 years of experience in the global banking industry, sat down, looked around the table, and said: “I wish I hadn’t been so […]
Offshore Structures 101—Why, Where, And How This week I’m hosting my annual Offshore Wealth Summit from Paris. For the first time ever, it’s a virtual event. My fellow presenters and I are all signing in remotely—me from Paris, them from Panama, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, Belize, Italy, Portugal, Thailand, the United States, etc.—to discuss strategies for [...]
Answers To Two Important U.S. Tax Questions It’s tax time again for us Americans. That is, this Tuesday, April 18 (April 15 is a Saturday and April 17 is a holiday in D.C.), is the reporting deadline for those of us who haven’t filed for an extension until October. How many tax dates do we [...]
Putting aside the challenges FATCA has created for Americans (in fact, for everyone) wanting to open bank accounts overseas, the filing requirements and
It’s official. The IRS can now revoke your passport if you owe them US$50,000 or more. The new law was tucked away in a new highway bill dubbed the FAST Act (Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act) that was signed by President Obama last week. What better way to get a contentious, potentially civil rights-violating bill […]
Five years ago, when the U.S. FATCA law had just been passed and the effects it would have on non-U.S. banks were a hot topic for speculation, a banker I knew from Andorra made a remark to me along the lines of: “We’ll all go back to goat herding before we roll over for the […]
I’ve been reporting on the coming of FATCA for eight years. That’s old news. FATCA has arrived. It’s a reality of today’s offshore world. Banks have decided or are in the process of deciding which path they’ll follow toward compliance. Either they’ll continue to work with American clients and meet all the reporting requirements… or […]
I got peoples’ attention with my “I Confess: I Don’t Care If The U.S. Dollar Collapses” headline last week. Boy, did I get mail, positive, negative, and lunatic. Some readers wrote to point out that the U.S. dollar is on a run and isn’t going to collapse anytime soon…or ever. Others argued that no level […]