I want to relate a story which quite simply is making me livid and it involves my bank - Nedbank for whom I worked for neigh on 40 years
About 6 weeks ago I wanted to load a new beneficiary to my list on my profile - and the banks system returned an error message. I detest visiting my bank because I find the staff clumsy and award (read inefficient and poorly skilled) to resolve the matter. The bank were unable to tell me why the condition had occurred and upon writing to senior management of the bank they informed me that they had my landline as the mechanism of contact and as such that's why the error message happened, yet when I told them that all previous beneficiaries had been loaded successfully and that the authorization to proceed to load the beneficiary had always been on record and used - I merely had to respond to the message ye or no. When I pointed this out to the bank that this was the case they then informed me that the reason for blocking my ability to load beneficiaries was because I had not completed a FATCA declaration. On questioning them on what this was all about they informed me that all clients and not only clients of Nedbank are required to sign this declaration. In 2014 SA signed (along with many other countries) an accord with the USA wherein, foreign country banks provide data to SARS of all USA citizens who are holding banking accounts in these foreign countries. The principle behind this is that the IRS is trying to determine which of its citizens are holding funds in a foreign country and why they have not been declared to the IRS - this has a lot to do with terrorism and the curtailment of these activities.
So given that all bank clients are supposed to sign this declaration (my bank says it is similar to FICA - which I dispute as this legislation was tackled far more professionally to get everybody on board) I checked with a number of existing Nedbank staffmembers/and pensioners whom I know to gauge whether they had signed such a declaration - of the 8 approached not one had signed the declaration. When I visited the designated Nedbank branch to sign the declaration with a particular person he was unavailable (I have yet to sign the declaration) ask asked the frontline staff of Nedbank whether they had signed such a declaration and only 1 of 4 confirmed signing such a document. I then visited Standard Bank and ABSA in the Northgate (JHburg) centre and proceeded to engage some of their staff on this whole FATCA matter and only Standard confirmed to me that their system flags customers who have not signed a declaration but they did indicate that it was not a general rule that all their clients were required to sign the form. I further learnt that though this legislation has gone to parliament it has not been approved so in essence this is not eligible for enacting until such time as it is passed by parliament
So my question is rather who has signed this document with their bank - because to ask who has not may end up with an overwhelming no answer
Maybe one of the clever ones on this forum can run a survey schedule allowing 1 of 2 option either forumites have or haven't signed a FATCA declaration. Just as an aside those who have in fact signed this declaration are you aware as to what you signed - especially since you may only have a single citizenship, that being RSA
Interested in seeing responses
Thanks
