[colechristensen]

Swiss banks were doing business in the US, setting up offices in the US, and literally counseling American clients on how to export their assets. These were Americans living in America doing business with Swiss banks on American soil in order to avoid taxes.

Several banks have been stomped on for this behavior, the "oldest bank in the world" closed as a result and there have been many other actions.

If you don't want to deal with American taxes, renounce your citizenship, or earn less than $100k abroad.

[captainpiggies]

Correlation =/= Causation

There are way bigger fish for the US to fry other than Switzerland. FATCA wasn’t created because of Swiss banks. Claiming otherwise is ignorant.

[ShorsHammer]

For many decades Switzerland was definitely the biggest fish to fry for most western countries regarding offshore accounts and tax dodging. By far.

[colechristensen]

There are but the prosecutors went for the biggest win, not the biggest target.

Making cases is hard because these things are very convoluted.

Swiss banks, however, were doing things which were really obviously illegal and their brazen tax avoidance made them a good target for prosecutors. Other targets are honestly just better at avoiding the law and will be harder to get to. Progress is being made though.

[CaptainZapp]

That's true, but has nothing to do with the mess US citizens have to go through, when opening a bank account abroad.

A lot of banks in Switzerland will outright refuse to deal with US customers, even when they have residency.

This is, however, not specific to Swiss banks. US citizens (or even green card holders) can have a hard time opening a bank account just about anywhere, because of such onerous reporting requirements[1] to the US authoritues that's it's just not worth their while.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance...