A new sensation from the USA - fedka. But what is this exactly? No, not exactly vodka. Fedka is actually a US law, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). Hmm, it's really not as complicated as it seems. Basically, just like many other countries, the USA is dealing with a huge budget deficit. That's why the USA needs money. And what are the possible sources of income for a country like this? That's right, one possibility is through taxes. In the past, the USA didn't take full advantage of this possibility. After all, every US citizen who lives abroad actually has to pay taxes in the USA, but only a few really do. So, this means the United States is losing a lot of money. That's why the US government passed the new FATCA law. Foreign banks, such as banks in Germany, are now supposed to identify which of their customers are US citizens. This includes private customers as well as corporate customers. Even all shareholders who are US citizens and hold more than 25 percent of a company are affected. The banks then send this selected information about their American customers to the German federal tax office in compliance with the standard set forth in German data protection laws. This central federal office collects the information from every bank, pulls it, and sends it on to the IRS, the American tax authority. This sounds like a lot of work. Why actually? Why should people in Germany care about the tax laws in the USA? Can we just ignore them? Well, we could if there wasn't this little addendum to the FATCA law. Every bank that does not cooperate will automatically be charged a 30 percent penalty on all yields in the USA. This doesn't only affect the bank but also...
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Video instructions and help with filling out and completing Will Form 8854 Abroad
