Who's FATCA anyway? Should anyone be afraid of FATCA?

[suzukig1]

People are confusing FATCA and FBAR.

Limits for money in foreign accounts that require form filing:

FBAR: $10,000

FATCA: $50,000 if living in the U.S.  Much higher if living overseas.

[suzukig1]

The way I see it, is if your married to a Philippine citizen and you trust them (why would you get married if you didn't) then just put everything in their name.  Problem solved..If your not, Im sure there are ways....think, for the most part things here are not on computer, most of the stuff I run into here is kept in a file drawer somewhere..

Most people file joint returns because it usually lowers their taxes.  It would not do any good to put things in your wife's name if you file a joint return.  If you file a joint return your Phl citizen wife is subject to the same IRS rules/laws as a U.S. resident would be; filing all forms, taxed on world wide income, etc.

[bcnorth]

“The federal government's campaign to track down money held by U.S. taxpayers in foreign countries . . . (began) July 1, 2014. That is when the main provisions of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, known as Fatca, came into force. The law . . . is pushing tens of thousands of foreign banks and other financial institutions to disclose information about U.S. customers. It will make life more complex and expensive for many U.S. taxpayers with financial ties abroad, affecting everything from retirement savings to investments to divorce settlements.  Fatca is an ambitious effort to root out wealthy U.S. taxpayers hiding money offshore and put an end to tax evasion as a profitable line of business for banks” (June 20th 2014 Wall Street Journal). 
However, if one does not want to go through all of the worry and filing of Fatca, there are other somewhat dubious ways of dealing with the Fatca problem. Suppose a U.S. Citizen living in the Philippines is primarily interested in just filing his/her own tax return and has little or no interest in how tax laws affect banks or large corporations.  Fatca still requires non U.S. owned banks to file the amount of U.S. funds for each and every U. S. citizen account held by an American and the banks can be punished if they don’t follow the American Internal Revenue Service guidelines. If the bank refuses then it will have great difficulty working with any banks in the U.S. Consequently, thousands of banks located worldwide now file with Fatca the amount of funds held by U.S. citizens. However, there are a small number of  banks that refuse to do this. As an example, Canadian Direct Financial, a subsidiary of Edmonton’s Canadian Western Bank refuses to do so but has some restrictions.  It will not hold the funds of an American. If a new client is not an American say a Filipino girlfriend, then she can place funds in Canadian Direct Financial, the online bank, for Canadian Western Bank. Then she can send the funds to her account in a Philippine bank. Then she can provide funds to her American husband/boyfriend in cash or into his Filipino account making sure the bank never obtains his Social Security number. All of the banks in the Philippines supply information on American financial dealings to Fatca but they are unconcerned with Philippine citizen account holders. But suppose an American, without a compliant girlfriend, would like to keep his banking somewhat private and not have his financial affairs exposed to Fatca, what can the person do? One option would be to contact GWS (http://gws-offshore.com/) that deals specifically in helping individuals and corporations to ensure their financial dealings are kept confidential. As an example it will set up a very private corporation in the Marshall Islands for less than $1400 U.S. with a small yearly charge. Money could easily be moved into this XYZ corporation and just as easily be moved out. By doing this a person doesn’t have to go through the immense amount of administrative work involved with a Fatca filing. My advice, for whatever it is worth, is to contact whoever does your legal work to determine whether such an activity is questionable or it is downright illegal before proceeding to do so.
Also, following is a report that may be helpful on your foreign income filing: US Taxes Abroad for Dummies (update) - American Citizens ... <https://americansabroad.org/issues/taxation/us-taxes-abroad-dummies/>

[Art, just a re(tired) Fil-Am]

"The federal government's campaign to track down money held by U.S. taxpayers in foreign countries" (began) July 1, 2014.
"Fatca is an ambitious effort to root out wealthy U.S. taxpayers hiding money offshore and put an end to tax evasion as a profitable line of business for banks” (June 20th 2014 Wall Street Journal). 

Not too many retirees residing permanently in the Philippines are wealthy U.S. taxpayers hiding money offshore! So what's all the fuss about, unless one is having a home built and needs large sums of money or buys a new luxury vehicle or needs large sums of money for medical bills and or funeral costs to bury a loved one, then maybe one will need to file with Facta or to whomever? 

[bcnorth]

Art, I quoted the Wall Street Journal that used the term "wealthy" wrongly. I apologize. I have been a dual American/Canadian citizen for more than 30 years and have dutifully filed my income taxes in both countries each year. Tax time always was, and still is unpleasant. Then, it became increasingly complicated. In 2014 I sent in 67 pages of tax materials. My income is simple; a small amount of  Social Security, a small amount of Canada Pension, Canadian university retirement income and a relatively small sum for teaching a single university course on-line.  As you are undoubtedly aware, the U.S. is one of only three countries in the world taxing its citizenry on the basis of their worldwide income. The purpose of Fatca is to enable the government to discover every dollar a citizen receives outside the U.S. and what the citizen is doing with his/her money. Taxes for the top one percent have substantially decreased in recent years and many large corporations such as  General Electric have paid no income  taxes in years. Both Republicans and Democrats have hit middle class family income and lower middle class family income extremely hard. A hard hitting Fatca is meant to rectify a huge loss of government income. Foreign banks refusing to turn over income and outgo of U.S. citizens are continiously threatened. My reading of Fatca is that anything over $10,000 in a foreign bank is examined very, very carefully. Moreover, it is not just rumor, but is true that once the IRS believes someone is cheating that in every following year the person is examined very closely.

[Art, just a re(tired) Fil-Am]

Since retiring, our taxes have been so simple and nothing to fuss about really!
Why would FACTA, IRS or whomever be interested as to what I do with my
meager pensions compared to those who are still working and earning huge
salaries in 5 or 6 figures, where $10,000 is just chump change?     

[BudM]

Who gives a crap unless you are hiding damn money?  I don't have squat to hide even if I wanted to and so what if the IRS examines close and then gets a wild hair and examines closer from there on out.  For someone who thinks FATCA is such a good idea for catching the people doing the hiding, you didn't waste any time talking about the offshore accounts and giving a link in case you want to keep it private.  Keep it private?  Keep what private?  Yeah, I hope they nail them all.  And nail them good.

If you are just a regular person like most of us on here, even if you have to file it, there is nothing to it but spending a little bit of time.  It think this FATCA subject has been run in to the ground.

[bcnorth]

Bud, Like you, I hope the government is able to catch the large tax cheaters. However, a decision was made in 2012 to catch any American citizen living outside the U.S. whether the person purposefully does not file  fifty or a hundred dollars of income or whether the person simply makes a mistake. The IRS doesn't accept  mistake arguments. I believe I made reference to a firm in Hong Kong that discusses how to keep one's income secret. However, it is a law firm that emphatically emphasizes its advice is legal advice.

[hitekcountry]

Two points I would make.

First the point that this is aimed at the wealthy and that doesn’t include us, I would remind you that the income tax when it was first introduced was only going to affect the wealthy, the top 1% it was not anything everyone else needed to be concerned about. Yeah well laws often get modified and that one certainly did.

The second point that it’s all about tracking down tax cheats and you say I’m not a tax cheat so why worry?  Yeah as long as that’s the real purpose and nothing changes then we’re good right? Well there are people who know a lot more about this subject then I do that claim the “Tax Cheat” claim is bogus, and that the amount of “tax cheat” money that is out there in no way justifies this huge program.
 
What they claim the real purpose is to have in place the ability to institute capital controls if and when the Gov. or the banking system feel it’s necessary for whatever reason.

http://beforeitsnews.com/economy/2012/06/fbar-8398-fatca-and-capital-controls-the-trail-that-leads-to-the-forced-repatriation-of-your-foreign-assets-2291684.html