Kibkom North Cyprus Forum

The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) tax regulations. Husbands UK bank (not mine, they kicked me out) require information from customers whose Tax Residency they can't currently confirm or are missing information, or they can't be sure of Tax Residency on the details they hold. . Three reason why they require information.
1. ? opened a new account.
2. ? amended the personal details they hold
3. A review of your accounts has indicated that Tax Authority don't hold up to date information on Tax Residency.

There is a three page Self Certification Form they want back with 60 days of 3rd December. Plus copies of P.Ports and TIN number etc. That ain't going to happen!!!

Filled in this form 4 different times last year, each time I got it back again asking for the same information as I had already given - gave up and just added HMRC to the list and sent it all back. Heard nothing since.

Do not take this FATCA Business lightly. They CLOSED our joint Bank Account TWICE when we were in the TRNC leaving us totally without access to money. It usually occured during a Bank Holiday Weekend.

Munchy not taking it lightly at all and have sent everything back to the person who has PofA for husband. I know about closing accounts down, Halifax closed EVERY THING THEY HAD IN MY name last year. What I meant by "not going to happen" was to Send an original Passport to HMRC This form is to ascertain my husbands total income and whether he now falls into the grubby claws of the the the Moronic Reece .

BJB/Munchy, Similar/same things have happened to me as well - I would never send any original Passport to anyone and if it is HMRC that is asking for it I am surprised! However, I did send a photo copy of my passport and a full explanation of where the TRNC is and which countries are guarantor powers for this country - just in case they were too lazy to find out for themselves - also explained why it was not really possible to carry out communications via surface/air mail and if they wanted more information then they were free to phone me at my registered phone number which they already held. As for account closures, Nationwide made our lives a total misery by closing our joint accounts over a Christmas/New Year period when it was impossible to set up new accounts with any other bank or to contact our pension providers - so I offer commiserations on being left without money as we have been there as well! Strange though that it was Lloyds Bank who requested all the information and I have recently confirmed with them that our accounts are still open and fully operational even though we live abroad. It seems the key to keeping your UK accounts is not to have any of them that gain interest at all. If you only have a current account then they are happy to deal with you but any online savings gives the banks problems with the HMRC so they will close all those first.

I was given to understand that the whole excercise was to prevent Fraud / Tax Evation etc. Despite conforming to ALL requests, incl Hours on the telephone, it seems we WERE HIGH RISK. How on Earth do you defend yourself when you are totally innocent of such misdemeanor and you do not have the means for Legal challenge.

Do NOT put all your Income / savings in one Bank, use Wise, Revolut, Monzo etc so that if your bank closes your account you have access to some funds. Until you can resolve the problem. We have done just that , Santander do not use them, we have another Bank now.

The whole business is a load of errors One phone call from our P of A to tax offices proved it. You should only be sent this if you move house address, or country, or change contact phone numbers, or re marry, or become a widow or widower, stop receiving a pension or have a large increase in pension and you go over the tax threshold etc etc etc. . Apologies from all and sundry in UK and told to ignore. I suspect many people will receive these seven sheets of blurb unnecessarily. Apart from being a year older there were no change of circumstances for my husband in 21 years and tax offices etc only have to look at his date of birth and we would have informed them in any case. P of A in UK handles ALL correspondence and phone communication and EVERY organisation in UK is aware. In this case it was one private pension company in the UK, supplying incorrect information to the tax offices in UK, which red flagged up an error, which was not an error.

turor4u, thank you for your advice, but have already gone through this debacle last year and have sorted the matter out.

What was interesting that 3 of the of the pages were devoted entirely to Americans or anyone having lived in the US for any length of time. There are tens of thousands of Americans in the UK who still have to pay US tax but trying to avoid paying UK as well.

It would not surprise me to find out that the private pension company was Prudential! Nothing but trouble for me since my original company sold out to them. Glad its all sorted.

It is worth noting that, unlike most of Europe , a UK Citizen is NOT LEGALLY ENTITLED to a Bank Account. This gives a lot of leeway for UK Banks to " pick and choose " their clientele.