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Comment by oxalo | Hacker News Reader

So are they policing all the corporations with this law too? Or just Average Joe?

They are being more stringent with foreign banks that deal with Americans.

The foreign banks respond: "Ok, we won't deal with any Americans", which makes life harder for Average Joe Expat

It's part of a broad government push to repatriate American funds into American banks. There are similar regs coming (proposed?) related to Americans owning foreign corporations. All the same playbook; just keep funds on-shore, in this case by making life miserable for foreign companies that deal with American money.

> It's part of a broad government push to repatriate American funds into American banks.

Not exactly. US government wants to repatriate taxes earned by American people and capital abroad and making foreign banks accountable to US is part of making that enforceable.

On-shoring of dollars into US accounts because they can't be kept easily abroad is unpleasant side effect. When US dollars leave US, economically it is the equivalent of the World giving US treasury an interest free loan. The return of those dollars is essentially a repayment of that loan and acts as inflation economically. This could be useful, but the US government already has a direct lever on the quantity of dollars in the US economy through the FED.

To summarize, US Gov only wants the return of dollars that it will receive as taxes, but by all means don't bring back the rest.

If I understand correctly, the law is aimed at banks to disclose assets of americans with more than 50k in savings, the banks are overreacting and not handling accounts of any americans as a result. So I wouldn't say the law targets the average Joe (I know very few average Joes with $5k in savings, let alone $50k), but the banks are. Perhaps its a calculated move to get people upset with the IRS/Treasury to create backlash. I have no idea whether the root law impacts US corps.

It's 50k in "financial accounts", which includes retirement funds, and the financial institutions expose themselves to enormous penalties if they fail to report a single customer.

"the banks are overreacting"

Really? The USA is considering everything as under its jurisdiction, but the banks are overreacting?

Well technically it is not jurisdiction but treaties as well as leveraging economic clout and agreements.

I'm not using the word "overreacting" as a pejorative, but as a simple descriptive. The "overreaction" is simply doing more than the law requires of them. In this case, not taking americans as customers. The law does not require that of them, but they see it as too great a risk to their business.

I would also say that if the IRS is able to enforce their rules without war planes, then it is technically within their jurisdiction. The jurisdiction comes from a) legal jurisdiction within the USA and b) treaties that allow them to enforce laws beyond the USA.

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