[wg0]

There's a term called "US Person". Many European banks will refuse to open your bank account if you're a "US Person" and require upfront declaration that I'm not a "US Person."

Reason? Because banks don't want to deal with the mandatory annual reporting of the "US Persons" to US government on regular basis.

Their solution? Don't have a "US Person" as your client.

[MikeNotThePope]

I’m an American living abroad. I know a bit about this. Here’s my experience:

- The USA passed a law called the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which mandates that any bank doing business with Americans overseas must report certain information to the USA: https://www.irs.gov/businesses/corporations/foreign-account-...

- When anyone anywhere in the world opens a bank account, the bank asks if you have ever been a “US Person,” and if you have been, then you need to provide documentation about whether you currently are or aren’t (typically showing a USA passport or proof of having renounced USA citizenship)

- For banks that will work with Americans, they have to report basic information back to the USA every year, which includes highlights like your contact information, tax ID, account numbers, end-of-year balance, etc.

- Americans also must self-report this kind of information via the FBAR (Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts, technically FinCEN Form 114), which isn’t too horrible to fill out other than the fact that you file it through FinCEN’s clunky BSA E-Filing system, which still wants you to install Adobe Acrobat Reader like it’s 2010.

- FATCA is primarily annoying to banks because they already have to comply with CRS, the Common Reporting Standard, which is basically an international standard developed by the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) where participating countries automatically report each other’s residents’ financial information. The kicker is that the USA never actually joined CRS, so banks have to run a whole separate FATCA process just for a relatively small number of Americans living abroad, which is a big duplication of effort.

[zeafoamrun]

This appears to have been downvoted but everything is completely factual in what the parent poster said. I have literally been told by many banks they can't help me due to this.