The news that banks in the Netherlands will not, in fact, be obliged to begin requiring their U.S. person account-holders to have U.S. Taxpayer Identification Numbers (TINs), such as Social Security numbers, as of Sept 1, has (unsurprisingly) been welcomed by such TIN-lacking U.S. persons in that country.
(Particularly since Sept. 1 came and went more than a week ago...)
Dutch Tax Affairs and Tax Administration secretary Marnix van Rij said on Wednesday that he plans to ask – for a second time – that the country's data protection authority, known as the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens, or AP, revisit the U.S. tax law known as FATCA, in view of significant data protection concerns that were first raised in 2020 by the European Court of Justice's striking down of the main mechanism that EU member states have traditionally relied on to protect the personal data of their citizens.
Accidental Americans who live in the Netherlands have been told that banks in the country have agreed not to require either their Social Security numbers or Certificate of Loss of Nationality in order to keep their accounts open until Sept. 1, 2022.
The news came last month, while Dutch finance minister Wopke Hoekstra last week revealed that he and his fellow ministers are continuing to press their U.S. counterparts over the way they require Dutch financial businesses to enforce the U.S. tax evasion prevention law known as FATCA.
Two of the Netherlands' largest banks, ABN AMRO and Rabobank, are also prepared to close the bank accounts of "unintentional Americans" if these individuals "do not cooperate with the U.S. requirements" that they provide tax information numbers, such as a Social Security number, or evidence that they have entered into the U.S. system for relinquishing their citizenships, according to a report published on Friday on the news website NRC.nl.
A banking industry association in the Netherlands said on Friday that it was working with the American Embassy in the country to resolve the issue of American account-holders who lack "Tax Information Numbers," or U.S. Social Security numbers, but who are reluctant to get one ahead of imminently giving up their American citizenship.
In the early years of this century, a number of major media exposés reported how Homeland Americans, as well as rich people from other developed and developing countries, were making...
Mar-18-2023
