Hacker News Reader

Not to mention even opening a bank account ;)

Swiss banks routinely either reject Americans, or ask for so much paperwork.

Swiss banks reject Americans because of US legislation, namely FATCA (https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/tax-policy/foreign-a...) Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. It's introduced reporting requirements and thus massive costs in having US citizens banking with you, thus it's cheaper to just say no. Rational economic response.

I know about FATCA, but just to clarify, it's not just Swiss banks. A lot of European banks do so too, unless they're one of the super major ones.

And all of them do that because of FATCA.

Which frankly speaking should be rejected due to Congress reneging on their side of agreement.

>...because of US legislation, namely FATCA ...

To be clear: The issue with FACTA is that saying "yes" to an American citizen (or national) adds costs to the foreign bank (in free labour on-behalf of the US). The US doesn't fund any of the work of reporting these accounts back to US.

Its almost as if the US has internal sources of free labour and expects no repercussions from expecting the same from their international counterparts...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com