also called Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act · Form 8938 · Statement of Specified Foreign Financial Assets
A US law requiring foreign banks to report American account holders and requiring Americans to report foreign financial assets on their tax return.
FATCA is a US law that makes foreign banks report their American account holders to the US, and makes Americans report their foreign financial assets on their tax return. It is a big reason some overseas banks simply turn Americans away rather than deal with the reporting. For you it means a separate filing on top of the FBAR, so being American abroad comes with paperwork that other nationalities skip.
You walk into a bank abroad ready to open an account, and once they learn you are American they decline, because the FATCA reporting they would owe on you is not worth their trouble. You are left hunting for a bank willing to take an American client.
It is why many foreign banks refuse American clients, and it adds a separate reporting form beyond the FBAR.
The difference is the whole point, so here is each one in a line.
These are the systems that report bank accounts to tax authorities, mostly aimed at Americans.
FATCA is the US law making foreign banks report American account holders, and FBAR is the separate filing Americans themselves submit on their foreign accounts once the total crosses a threshold.
CRS is the wider international version where countries swap account data automatically, and Streamlined Filing Procedures is the US amnesty for people who innocently failed to file.
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