Who's Afraid Of FATCA?

We are now firmly in the FATCA era and moving on to the post FATCA era. With the first FATCA reports being submitted in March 2015, by now many FFIs have registered and obtained their GIINs, trustees are documenting their trusts, holding companies have entered into appropriate sponsorship agreements, and the financial world is a flurry of W-8BEN-Es and tax status questionnaires. Many have come to the realisation that, although an annoyance, FATCA compliance is manageable. As many of us predicted, for compliant Americans, it is really just another form. However this has not stopped financial institutions from using FATCA as an excuse either to exclude US clients or impose special requirements (for instance, minimum account balances) on US clients wishing to open or maintain bank accounts. Some financial institutions...