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As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing expat banking issues and we are discussing this in the context of what is being called the American Families Plan. This is a bill that has currently not fully been promulgated if it ever ultimately gets passed and becomes law in the United States or law in its present form, but it would appear that it is going to have some tremendous ramifications for those doing their banking, definitely I think inside the United States possibly abroad, depending on circumstances. 

This is an article from Forbes, that is forbes.com, the article is titled: Under Biden Plan, The IRS Would Know A Lot More About Your Bank Accounts.  Quoting directly: "Simply put, the American Families Plan calls for banks and other financial institutions to report more than just a taxpayer's interest earned, capital gains and losses. Banks and other financial institutions would also be required to report "aggregate account outflows and inflows". In other words, the IRS will know about all of your bank accounts; whether you earned income on that account or not; how much is in the account in a given year; and how much was transferred in and out of that account. It is unclear how this would work but what is clear is that this new reporting obligation will create a massive compliance effort on the part of financial institutions and eliminate a massive blind spot that the IRS is currently enduring." Well I don't know if anybody is really crying that much for the IRS "enduring a blind spot". I am sure they are! Quoting further: "As things stand today, most taxpayers don't have an obligation to report how much money they have in their bank accounts, how much they deposited or how much they withdrew. Self-employed taxpayers who like all Americans self-report their income and deduction to the IRS are on the Honour System. W-2 wage earners on the other hand have their amount of wages reported to the IRS on their behalf." This will be a sea change if this happens. Effectively the bank in a sense will become something of a surveillance instrument against the taxpayer; against people that do banking there; against Americans banking. 

Now I don't know exactly how this would play out. We haven't really seen the details of how this would play out with respect to any kind of Offshore Banking, if there would be any ramifications. I don't really know how American law could directly reach into local law abroad and tell a bank how to do things. That said, it remains to be seen and as I have noted in other videos, this may result in Americans abroad being unable or having a very difficult time either getting or maintaining an onshore American bank account. It might ultimately end up creating problems for Americans abroad who want to have an offshore bank account. Again the full ramifications of this remain to be seen. We will certainly keep folks updated on this channel as the situation evolves.