re: A major immigration crackdown coming requiring banks to verify client citizenship.

For the life of me I have no idea why we aren't taxing remittances at 36% yet.

LINK

Collateral Damage: American Citizens and Investors

The intended base of the tax is international money transfers from the US sent and received by non-American nationals. While the charge is intended to target noncitizens (and perhaps particularly people working in the country without permission), its downsides are more extensive. It also places a compliance burden on many people who are not intended targets of the legislation: for example, Americans or foreign account holders making routine international transfers for other purposes than remittance, such as investment.

The requirements on Americans will fall on both financial institutions and individuals. Even the text of the bill itself suggests some of the compliance burdens at hand. Financial institutions will need to work with the US Treasury to become a qualified remittance transfer provider (RTP). Qualified institutions would then be required to automatically deduct the tax from any amount exceeding $15 transferred internationally, unless the sender can prove their citizenship.

Financial institutions have some means to determine if a transaction qualifies as a remittance (as required by the Electronic Funds Transfer Act of 1978). However, doing so at the scale and accuracy needed to make an effective tax base is another matter. Determining whether a client qualifies as a US national will be difficult. Financial institutions frequently already collect IRS Form W-9 under current law, which provides some information, but a W-9 alone may not be enough to satisfy the new national status verification requirements. In the case that someone cannot immediately prove citizenship but does so later, they may be able to secure a refund when they file their annual income tax return. And in addition to collecting and using the customers’ information, banks will also be required to submit large databases with lists of transactions and the associated personal information associated to the Treasury.

All the above are compliance requirements placed on American citizens. The tax involves additional paperwork and diminished privacy, and even a convoluted reimbursement process in cases where it is misapplied.

Perhaps an even more harmful consequence of the excise tax will be its dissuasion of foreign investment into the country. It makes it more difficult for foreigners to use US banks, even for purposes unrelated to immigration or remittance.

One example would be an international investor who maintains an account within the United States for the purpose of business. If this investor wishes to transfer funds to another account outside the country, it may bear the appearance of a remittance. But it is not one: the investor is withdrawing his or her own money, not transferring funds to others. An RTP may have difficulty verifying this, wrongfully charging someone withdrawing investment returns. In this case, the tax may function even as a de facto capital control, bearing the appearance of a capital outflow tax. This could disincentivize further and future foreign investment in the United States.

Another potential problem would be for businesses with international operations or supply chains. For instance, a small business in the Detroit-Windsor, Ontario area may have hundreds of transactions with Canadian and US customers, suppliers, and employees. Many of those business transactions will need to prove they are non-remittance in nature. And a larger business with thousands or tens of thousands of employees both in the US and elsewhere may do thousands of international transactions a day, most for reasons other than immigration or remittance. Creating a detailed accounting of these transactions, all to prove they do not incur tax, is a waste of everyone’s time.

Americans familiar with the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), another deeply cumbersome set of reporting requirements, may see an echo of FATCA in the proposed remittance tax. FATCA’s rollout was frequently delayed by practical difficulties, and ultimately has exasperated a great many Americans without raising much revenue.

Doesn't POTUS appoint FDIC Board members? If so, is the path to threaten banks with pulling their FDIC coverages if they give illegals accounts?

Most operate off cash anyway.

Waiting on Trumps legal path to citizenship that follows this round of boarder fixes, criminal deportations and peacocking.

He knows we are dependent on this labor as an economy and have zero solutions or people to replace it. Cull down and stabilize our economy.

The changes they made to social security access and Everify over the years is what actually allows many to work. ADP knows there are millions of duplicate social security numbers working at the same time (that aren’t second jobs).

quote:

---

apply for a tax ID #. They call it a TIN

---

You left out the fact that it follows the exact same numbering convention XXX-XX-XXXX as an SSN, so there is no way for the layman, bank, school, or hospital to know whether it is an SSN or a TIN.

Lot of fake SS# out there as well.

Next

quote:

---

Anti-immigrant hysteria is real. Do you think that all immigrants can be eliminated?

---

Odd, you keep misspelling the word “illegal”, you keep spelling it “immigrant”.

quote:

---

Do you have to be a citizen to open an account?


How do foreigners do business here?

---

What part of "legal" versus "illegal" do you not understand?

quote:

---

We built an economy around these folks.

---

You certainly did.

quote:

---

Anti-immigrant hysteria is real. Do you think that all immigrants can
be eliminated?

Immigrants are an integral part of America, like it or not. It’s been considered to be an overwhelmingly positive aspect of our society. Until recently(2016).. .

---

Illegal immigration is real. Do you think all immigrants are legally here?

Coming here illegally carries a penalty, like it or not.

quote:

---

I can't imagine this working out well for banks. Which are a necessary evil to our economy.

---

Illegals are so valuable to democrats, they’ll stoop to this level of delusion and imply they’re crucial to every facet of our country.