FATCA - WTH

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HavocXphere

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Just got a mail from my bank telling me they need to report a bunch of stuff to SARS for the US

In March 2016, the global version of the United States’ Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), known as the Common Reporting Standard (CRS), will come into effect in South Africa. Both FATCA and CRS affect individuals, entities and financial institutions globally.

In essence, FATCA aims to combat US offshore tax evasion and recoup US tax revenues. It requires non-US financial institutions to provide the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) with information relating to its clients who are US citizens (in South Africa this information flow is facilitated via SARS).

Building on FATCA, CRS is the global standard for automatic exchange of financial account information and extends to all foreign-held accounts and not only those of US citizens.

To adhere to these international reporting requirements, South African financial institutions must collect information and report to SARS on its clients (individuals and entities):

that are US citizens or tax residents, or
that are non-South African tax residents, or
that have US or other foreign details recorded on our systems.
These details include:

Citizenship
Physical/residential addresses
Place of birth
Postal address
Controlling persons and relationships
Power of attorney
Phone numbers
Care - of address
The information reported to SARS would include the above indicators as well as additional information such as:

Financial accounts for example bank accounts or stock broking accounts
Balances and payments into/out of the accounts
Tax residencies and tax identification numbers
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WTF. Seems rather invasive...
 
Is this for a bank account? 'Cause afaik our banks by law aren't even allowed to report to SARS let alone report to them for US related stuff.
 
Swa said:
Is this for a bank account? 'Cause afaik our banks by law aren't even allowed to report to SARS let alone report to them for US related stuff.
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lol no SA bank accounts definitely do get reported to SARS (and imo thats OK).

This stuff is news to me though. Its probably easier to close my SA account than deal with this.
 
Xzib1t said:
Filling out a form with your name, ID number, possibly address, SA Tax number, Tax numbers of any other countries, and signing it. That's all
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eh sounds do-able as long as they're fine with a scanned in one.
 
hat are US citizens or tax residents, or
that are non-South African tax residents, or
that have US or other foreign details recorded on our systems.
Click to expand...

That bit sounds really dodgy, I thought FATCA only applied to US citizens?!?

Either way, out of principle I like to make these things hard for the bank if there is no immediate penalty to me for doing so e.g. anything they ask for that owuld already have been covered by FICA I'd tell them to check their own records etc
 
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