yeah I have eu citizenship and can't open an account in europe. Now I can if I am resident to the particular area. I think europe is losing a big opportunity as I would not be surprised if quite a few us people would not mind having a bit of euros in a better run banking system just in case. They should tell the us to shove it with whatever laws or treaties prevent this.
this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2026
160 points (91.2% liked)
You Should Know
44802 readers
598 users here now
YSK - for all the things that can make your life easier!
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must begin with YSK.
All posts must begin with YSK. If you're a Mastodon user, then include YSK after @youshouldknow. This is a community to share tips and tricks that will help you improve your life.
Rule 2- Your post body text must include the reason "Why" YSK:
**In your post's text body, you must include the reason "Why" YSK: It’s helpful for readability, and informs readers about the importance of the content. **
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding non-YSK posts.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-YSK posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.
If you harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
If you are a member, sympathizer or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- The majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.
Rule 11- Posts must actually be true: Disiniformation, trolling, and being misleading will not be tolerated. Repeated or egregious attempts will earn you a ban. This also applies to filing reports: If you continually file false reports YOU WILL BE BANNED! We can see who reports what, and shenanigans will not be tolerated. We are not here to ban people who said something you don't like.
If you file a report, include what specific rule is being violated and how.
Partnered Communities:
You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.
Community Moderation
For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.
Credits
Our icon(masterpiece) was made by @clen15!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Google FATCA, the US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act.
Anyone anywhere in the world that is either US citizen, or a green card holder, or in other ways related to Murica, must pay US taxes. It's insane, but the US tax system is powerful enough to bully all other countries into compliance.
Don't get me started. 🤮
is powerful enough to bully all other countries into compliance
But not to tax the rich or corporations at all.
They can do anything they want. That is just something they don't want to do. Again, 🤮
load more comments
(9 replies)
Financial institutions in Japan ask the same thing. It is because Americans have to pay tax to American even when they don’t live in America. It just means there is more paperwork apparently.
That's only if you make more than 100k, just for additional information.
But they still have to report it, even if it is below.
Yup, I had no idea how fucked you guys were with the taxes thing until I learned you had to declare it twice if living abroad
Luckily I’m not one of those guys haha
It's not that funny tbh, they're people being treated poorly by their government
american in europe here,
this is true. it's very nearly impossible to open a bank account. There is exactly one bank in Switzerland who allows americans to open accounts, UBS. So far no banks in france have allowed me to open an account, even though I have a french residency permit. This makes it nearly impossible to take loans to buy things like houses or cars. Basically life here is impossible because being american fucking sucks.
That's crazy. I never had any of these issues living in Japan. Why does the EU make it so much harder than Japan does?
Open an account at Service CU out of NH. Designed to work in Europe (IBAN, free foreign ATMs, etc). Everyone who works for the state department gets it, and afaik it's open to the public.
iban thing is nice, do you know if you can finance cars or homes? right now i have to have to drive around a beater because no european bank = no loan
I’ve used ServiceCU for more than 20 years and yes you can buy cars and such through them
thanks! I'm going to check them out.
Renounce your citizenship.
i don't have a second citizenship to fall back on, so i'd be stateless. also, i can't afford to since you have to pay all the taxes on potential income for the next 10 years or something
Only people who make more than 200k/year or have more than 2 million in unrealized taxable assets have to pay an expatriation tax.
There is no paying future taxes as that’d be asinine.
TIL, i thought i read that 10 year tax thing somewhere. probably just bs i saw online and didn't look into it
I would absolutely talk to an embassy or at least an international tax professional before making decisions and not rely on Lemmy.
It’s not discriminatory. They don’t have any legal obligation to serve citizens of foreign countries. Citizen of USA isn’t a protected class. When they do serve American citizens it triggers a whole lot of regulatory work, and it’s understandable they don’t want to do that unless you’re a high net worth individual (ie they make enough profit to cover that cost)
It’s not discriminatory.
I mean it quite literally is discriminatory, but it's legal and justified discrimination.
Good point.
They do have an obligation to serve their own citizens. The US double tax reporting bullshit does apply to dual citizens.
I hate to recommend the evil empire, but there's a very good sub on this topic called r/AmerExit. Sometimes a community is too niche to exist on the Fediverse, and one must hold one's nose and visit Reddit for certain content.
AFAIK this has to do with US tax law and how it applies to income earned by US citizens abroad.
I have never answered yes to this, but would be surprised if it were impossible or even considerably harder for US persons to open bank accounts. I always thought this just triggered slightly different rules for the bank?
Lots of non-American banks don't want to deal with the rules, so it's easier for them to just say that they won't open accounts for Americans.
view more: next ›