Why Form 3520 Transactions 2023-2024

Hi everyone! Terran Day here from Sao Paulo, Brazil, with another episode of Offshore Maven. You know, for a long time, Latin American elites, rich Asians, and a surprisingly large number of moderate-income Europeans have used US banks to place their wealth away from the grasping hands of home country tax collectors. With three trillion dollars of deposits in US banks held by non-residents, America is by far the world's largest offshore banking center. US banks offer far more than secure deposits and convenience; they also offer a surprisingly high degree of secrecy. According to the Tax Justice Network, which is an advocacy organization promoting transparency and disclosure in international finance, the US ranks fifth in the world in terms of banking secrecy, ahead of Panama, the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda, and other well-known tax havens. The deepest irony in the Americas offshore banking center story is that the US has been waging war against the rest of the world offshore banking industry since 2010 when Congress passed the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). FATCA is a complex law of breathtaking imperial scope that compels virtually every financial institution outside of the United States to ferret out US taxable persons and report on their assets directly to the IRS. The ostensibly aim was to limit tax fraud, but FATCA has been met with a storm of protests by American expats and foreign banks that face staggering costs associated with compliance. Foreign governments have balked at the implicit US imposition on their domestic banking industries and have pushed back against FATCA provisions that violate their privacy laws. Within the US, the law has raised very little critical scrutiny, which is odd, presumably because it overtly affects few significant domestic political constituencies. However, domestic criticism is finally starting to coalesce. To understand why, follow the...