Reporting of foreign assets by fiscal residents of Spain

[GarySFBCN]

(I started a new thread because there are so many posts about this intermingled with other topics. I hope you all don’t mind.)

Ok, I have what may be an interesting problem. To comply with the new reporting law, I provided bank account information to my tax attorney. But he says that he needs the IBAN numbers for these accounts. Guess what? After today’s visit to my US bank, I found out that IBAN is not used in the US, nor is it used in most of the world.

If the IBAN information is hard-coded on the Internet screen to report accounts to the government and there is no way to work around this issue, no Chinese, Indians, Americans, Russians etc, are going to be able to comply with this law.

FYI, here’s a list of countries that use IBAN, scoured from an HSBC website:

http://www.hsbc.gr/1/PA_1_2_S5/content/greece/pdf/personal/express_banking/countries_using_iban.pdf

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Gary beware. The Spanish tax authorities are currently helping themselves to money contained in bank accounts in Spain and would not be above trying to do the same to foreign accounts. Also one of their favorite tricks is placing a legal embargo on any accounts they don’t like.

I would it give very careful thought before becoming a fiscal resident in Spain. There are unseen implications.

[GarySFBCN]

I would it give very careful thought before becoming a fiscal resident in Spain. There are unseen implications.

Actually, I won’t be a fiscal resident of Spain this year or next year. The reporting is on a US joint account with my husband, so it is his ‘share.’ And the money will be spent on the reforma, so there won’t be much to embargo.

I’m delaying my fiscal residency in Spain for at least a year (by limiting my visits next year to less than 180 days total) to sort all of this out. I have retirement accounts in the US (Roth IRA) in which I can deposit after-tax dollars and all earnings are free from taxes, but it isn’t clear that how the Spanish government will handle withdrawals from these accounts. Out tax attorney is researching this now.

I don’t mind paying Spanish taxes on the earnings but I do not want to be taxed again on money earned, deposited and fully TAXED years before I even considered a place in Spain.

There seem to be many other issues, specific to those of us who are US citizens, that need to be addressed. What I may end up doing is retiring, withdrawing all funds from all pre-tax accounts, pay a huge tax bill in the US, reinvest the money, and then become a Spanish fiscal resident, paying taxes on whatever earnings I get on those investments. This is more to avoid several layers of bureaucratic issues than it is to avoid a tax burden.

And truthfully, as I intend to comply with the laws, and am trying to comply, I’m not too concerned about embargoes. Most of my income will be derived from a few pensions that I’ve paid into and under most circumstances, the US does not allow the embargo of retirement pensions.

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