throwaway676890

The article is informative. It seems the requirements are only for banks that have a presence in the US. I'm not sure if the bank I went to has a presence in the US. But I can see the Pakistani government simply giving a blanket "No".

Do you have any details about this? My impression was that the Pakistani government felt that requiring US based people to report details of foreign accounts was a way to gather intelligence about other countries, and they didn't want to give them a way to do it. I did not think it was that Pakistani banks themselves had any reporting requirements to the US.

From what I have heard, the issue isn't paying taxes, but filing them. Do you not have to file even if your income is below $127K? As in you need to file and disclose everything, but won't owe any taxes?

The burden I always hear about is that the reporting requirements are high, and institutions in other countries are not equipped to provide as much detail as the US wants.

>Their American status can make them untouchable by many banks. Many foreign banks do not want American account holders.

This is an understatement.

Some years ago, I was a citizen of Pakistan and had a green card in the US. I never had any accounts in Pakistan. My father in Pakistan had passed away, and I traveled there to visit family. All of my share of the inheritance money was sitting in my brother's account in Pakistan. So we went together to a bank to open an account in my name and transfer my share of the inheritance over.

Now in Pakistan people have an ID card similar to the Social Security Card. They provide a different one for overseas Pakistanis. So when they asked for my ID card, I gave them my overseas ID card. Things were going smoothly until the person got to the address field.

"Oh, I see you live in the US?"

"Yes."

"Sorry, we cannot open a bank account for you."

I talked a bit more, and explained to them that I'm a Pakistani citizen, and not a US one. Nope. The laws were clear. No bank accounts for US based persons without special approval from some senior officials.

I asked would this apply even if I didn't have a green card and was merely a student in the US?

Yup.

The reason they gave me? US tax laws.