FATCA What is FATCA?

What is FATCA?

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The objective of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) is to identify all US-taxable individuals that hold accounts directly or as beneficial owners of legal entities, and hold them to their tax obligations in the United States. As a consequence of this US law, financial institutions around the globe are facing stricter requirements for the reporting of US taxes and must identify all US accounts. All accounts held in foreign countries by individuals who are subject to taxation in the US are therefore taxable.

These FATCA regulations came into effect on July 1, 2014. A large number of countries, including Switzerland, where Credit Suisse is headquartered, have concluded intergovernmental agreements with the US in order to incorporate the FATCA regulations into local law.

What does it mean for Credit Suisse clients?

To fulfil these obligations, banks are required to extend their current client identification procedures for both new and existing clients.
This means that clients are required to provide the banks with information in order to establish their status for the purposes of FATCA. Two categories of US clients exist and are defined as follows:

  • Individual clients are a US person and their account is therefore a US account if they are a US citizen or US tax resident.
  • Corporate clients (any non-individual client) are a US person, and therefore their account is a US account if, for example, they are a US company not listed on a stock exchange, or Non US based corporate clients are considered as having a US account if they are for example a certain kind of non-US corporate client who have at least one beneficial owner who is an individual US person.

As a leading global bank, our goal is to ensure that we are able to offer clients our full range of banking services around the world. By participating in FATCA, we are ensuring that we can continue to do so.

Further information

While Credit Suisse and its employees cannot provide clients with any legal or tax advice, clients are welcome to contact their relationship managers at any time for further information, or can visit www.irs.gov.

This site is not intended and cannot be used as a substitution for the final US Treasury Regulations, Intergovernmental Agreements or related documents. This site does not constitute tax advice. In case of uncertainty, please obtain professional tax advice.