I should probably point it that I’ve never claimed to be Belgian - actually I’m not - so I’m not compelled to vote, though that’s still something I want to do. I’m just predicting that if a European court strikes down the Belgian law, my country’s FATCA law is perhaps not very likely to be deemed much more legally sound than the Belgian FATCA law. Though, IANAL. I might be overreacting.

In order to access my Internet banking service, I need a valid bank card of some variety (credit, or debit). My bank needs to know how to get a new one to me, once the old expires. (So far they’ve done this without complaints).

My country’s residency register does inform the banks automatically about my registered address. I cannot tell the government and expect the bank to not know (if the bank is incompetent enough not to know what to do about with that information, that’s a different story, and that is for a different day).

While I haven’t looked closely at what it would take to be allowed to take up residency in Canada, my impression is that it is quite difficult indeed. Add to that, that I’m married to an American with family connections near where we are living, and moving is even harder.

The problem with banning people from identifying nazis is of course that the nazis then have a field day doing nazi things, chanting “you aren’t allowed to call me a nazi …”

My home country is one of those with a residence registry, run by the government. The banks get their address data about me from this registry. Unless I were to hide from that government that I’ve emigrated, which is legally dicey from several aspects, including to whom I should pay taxes, I have no way of hiding my address from the bank. And lying about which country I’m in - and then wandering in to the consulate in US and ask about renewing my European passport… No thanks.

Yes, the bank restricts parts of their web portal to anyone they deem being a resident of the US. IIRC that might not even have been primarily due to FATCA (I moved about the time when FATCA laws were being implemented around the world, not sure if I moved before or after my country implemented it), but to a second US law, called the Dodd-Frank act.

The point being that this law has nothing to do with “sanctioned individuals”.

Spain and Italy: you’re most likely correct.

When US is involved: there are special rules. Every country in Europe has an agreement with US that they’ll write their own law that compels all local banks (not only banks which does business in US) to tell US authorities about any customer that US considers to have some form of connection with US. This case appears to be about the Belgian edition of this set of laws.

Huh, Wikipedia has a blurb about the Belgian process of implementing this law, back in 2014-2015: “the Belgian Ministry of Finance orally confirmed that the IRS agreed to delay the FATCA reporting deadline. Belgian financial institutions now will have until the 10th day following the publication of the Belgian FATCA law into the Belgian official gazette to report their 2014 FATCA information to the Belgian tax authorities. The Belgian FATCA law is expected to be voted on before 2015 year-end.” [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance_Act], the section about ‘Delays in implementation of IGAs’.

There might be different implementations of these laws in different countries, but i can mention at least one country where "know your customer"applies to every single person they deal with, no exceptions.

Not sure why the downvotes.

Without getting into details, this is a bank that has already been in hot water for having closed customers’ accounts because the bank didn’t approve of the customers’ new addresses. Some of those cases didn’t even involve US.

Given all the various “know your customer” rules, I suspect that argument wouldn’t fly.

A subsidiary in US, or a subsidiary in any non-EU country that doesn’t feel bound by this verdict to remove any domestic laws compelling banks to report on their customers.

I don’t know the method by which my bank (which is European, indeed) could be punished by US if they didn’t share the data that IRS and FINCEN wants, true, at least if they don’t have any official activities in the US. I think I recall the was something about US strongarming every other country into effectively making FATCA reporting into local law? (Maybe that’ll change?) What else could US do? Designate officers of the non-cooperative bank as “money laundrers” and make their private lives hell on the international arena?

What I do know is that they (my bank) already is unhappy about the fact that I’m a “US person” and they’ve told me as much in person. They do not allow me to open new accounts. They do not allow me to do any trades beyond moving money between the savings accounts and use their bank card (which I do use when I’m in Europe). They would however allow me to close my accounts! Half their internet banking site is off-limits to me - it’s sometimes difficult to access documents like annual statements because the logical path to that part of the site got roped off!

I’m pretty sure they’re already looking for an excuse to cut me off.

As a European living in the US, this might also mean that my European bank (that I intentionally didn’t leave when I moved, for reasons) will close my account.