Quote:
Originally Posted by Forkbeard
You're wrong about this and Tammix is correct. It totally is shady and here's why: the short notice. If this is some long-apprehended regulatory problem (as people have detailed in this thread) that's been looming since the Obama administration, Paxum could have announced a leisurely phaseout of US personal accounts way back in June, giving everyone plenty of time to make alternative arrangements. That would have been the responsible, non-shady approach to the problem.
Alternatively, if they just got hit with some sudden regulatory action by international banking regulators or over-reaching US law enforcement, they could admit that, and apologize: "Sorry, people, we know this sucks but there's nothing we can do, our hands are tied and we literally have no option but to sever all ties by January 15 or be in violation of some new international regulatory order that we can't afford to comply with."
But neither of those are the case here. They are saying that the reason is long-term and strategic (these customers aren't going to be profitable in the business environment going forward) but they termed everyone on extremely short notice with vague justification. That is shady. And if you're a business customer who continues doing business with them, you ought to think really really hard about what it says for their loyalty to you and to your business processes, and what it's going to be like when they decide (for whatever reason) to dump all of your business for some unstated non-specific reason on 48 hours notice some random Monday in the future.
So yes, it's shady because either they're lying about the reason being long-term strategic (when in fact they have some sort of short-term unexpected law-enforcement regulatory imperative that they aren't admitting to) or they planned for a long time to dump all these customers on short notice. There's no non-shady third-way between those two possibilities! I don't care how much warm fuzzy feeling you have for these people, this behavior cannot be defended.
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I have no relationship with them, not even an account. I have no interest in their success. I have said the handling of this is sub-optimal. BUT the reason is probably real.
US accounts were profitable once, but not any more.
Listen, no one knows when the US will enforce a law, or how hard. To help you understand this, selling marijuana is a federal crime RIGHT NOW but people are legally doing it in several states.
If the feds start enforcing the law tomorrow, and they may, will marijuana sellers in Colorado be "shady" if they close down? Should they post a closing strategy on their doors? No. They just try to keep doing business.
The IRS has had the right to take the passports of tax delinquents in the US for a year now, but they have not enforced it. They say they will begin in January. Will they? who knows? But if they do you will see a lot of desperate people calling to pay their taxes.
People don't assume that things will be enforced until they are. FATCA is being phased in. Perhaps PAXUM assumed some rules would not be enforced. Perhaps after the close of the fiscal year they had to reconcile their books and realized how deeply unprofitable this segment had become.
Do you honestly expect a business to sit and lose money so they don't look "shady"? Fuck no, man, they'll do whatever it takes to stop losing money ASAP.
"FATCA is controversial because foreign banks have been forced to comply under threat of a 30% withholding penalty on all their U.S. transactions.[5][6] The U.S. has yet to comply with FATCA itself, because as of 2017, it has not yet provided the promised reciprocity to its partner countries and it has failed to sign up to the Common Reporting Standard (CRS).[7][8][9][10][11] FATCA has also been criticised for its impacts on Americans living overseas, and implicated in record-breaking numbers of U.S. citizenship renunciations throughout the 2010s.[12][13][14] Bills to repeal FATCA have been introduced in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, citing its unconstitutionality, particularly its breach of 4th amendment rights, as well as its high implementation costs and lack of revenue generation.[15][16][17] A hearing on the unintended consequences of FATCA was held by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on 26 April 2017"
Does that seem like settled law to you? Foreign financial entities have no idea what the US will do.