They can always renounce their US citizenship and they would no longer be liable for US taxes
1 Like
It is pretty expensive, requires you to be up to date on your taxes and attend an interview at the US Embassy and if they think you are doing it for tax reasons there is an additional charge.
Oh yeah wow $2350 according to here plus an expatriation tax if you earn over $160k/year.
Seems expensive, but having said that, for middle earners, $2350 prob only equates to a couple months tax so prob worth it.
Except they’re likely to enjoy the benefits of citizenship on occasion too 
Neocolonialism, pure and simple. Augustus would be proud
For anyone interested it explains it all in the email and asks you to do it in app which mitigates the risk of it being a scam.
Is this a new law I wonder as I’ve never been asked annually before now? Nor by any other bank either this year or in previous. I wonder if someone from Monzo could explain more. I knew they, the bank, had to report annually to HMRC people they’d identified as ‘reportable persons’, but not that by law customers must confirm annually, so I’m keen to get more information about this. That’s why I love coming on here, you learn something new every day!
2 Likes
Couldn’t agree more… Eagerly awaiting clarification
appreciate the link but that doesn’t actually answer @ysconhb question or mine.
Unless I am missing something it doesn’t explain why Monzo claim they have to ask me annually but banks like Lloyds have never asked me this question at all.
As someone who isn’t not actually British I too find myself in the position where I have this email. For comparison Starling asked me once when I set the account up and Lloyds have never asked.
So what is the reasoning behind Monzo requiring us to confirm this annually?
2 Likes
Two posts below the one I linked to, there’s a link to the government website:
You’ll also see that Lloyds state they’ll only ask for tax residency confirmation if they believe its not the UK: https://www.lloydsbank.com/help-guidance/common-reporting-standard.html
They appear to be referencing a paper based form for collecting this information, hence why they don’t just send it to all customers. Monzo can get accurate data by just baking the form into the app and asking everyone to confirm.
1 Like
Which suggests that
by law we need you to confirm your tax residency annually.
is in fact incorrect after all.
We’re still no nearer to having any definitive answers to my questions but have got more background on the issue. Interesting stuff! Thanks all.
They have a legal obligation to report this information annually.
They also have a legal obligation to ensure data they hold on you, is accurate.
Would you be happy with them reporting incorrect information, just because they made a few assumptions about you?
1 Like
Done a bit of research, and it seems like the law is that banks have to report the tax residency of each customer annually. To enable this, they will have to ask the customer at least once. But going forward, it seems to be up to the bank whether they continue to ask the customer each year, or if they only ask if activity on the account may indicate a confirmation should be requested.
Therefore I think what we have here is the email has tried to compress a complicated and nuanced area into something they can write in one line, which is why they’ve ended up with the “we need you to confirm your tax residency annually” line.
I wonder if this is yet another area where neobanks are apparently operating differently because they don’t have the excuses that legacy banks do for not doing so. J Legacy Bank can say “Oh, we can’t check all our customers annually, we have too many of them and our system is so old and creaky that it’s not possible to do it every year.” Neobanks running on the latest tech stacks don’t have the same excuses (see also, contactless limits).
tl;dr, Monzo may not be acting in the same way as any bank you’ve used before, but they don’t seem to be doing anything wrong.
6 Likes
Thanks @HoldenCarver, this was really helpful and definitely the sort of thing I was after, I really appreciate you taking the time to explain it like that. It makes so much more sense now, it’s just a bit of a shame it didn’t come from Monzo via the email or linked to forum posts, but alas we got there in the end! Perhaps during normal hours a staff member may have popped in with something similar.
Yes, completely, as information is correct or incorrect.
HMRC can come to me and say “Monzo have told us you’re tax resident in Botswana” and I can very easily say “They’re obviously incompetent, here’s the evidence to the contrary, perhaps you should take it up with them why they’ve told you that when they can clearly see were in a pandemic and I’ve not left Middlesbrough for a year and have no financial ties out of Yorkshire, let alone Botswana.”
Equally if I am in fact tax resident in Botswana I would, or should, have reported when I declare my taxes (in the vast majority of countries) that I have an account with Monzo, a ‘foreign bank’ for tax purposes, so it will make no difference what Monzo do. If Monzo think I’m UK tax resident, Botswana will already know about the account so won’t need Monzo/HMRC to tell them. They can say to HMRC “this persons already told us they have a Monzo account, can we have a snoop and see how much they spend on faberge eggs and if they’re hiding a trillion pounds from us in there?”, and if Monzo say I’m tax resident in Botswana and I am, then great, they’ve made the right choice.
Yeah that is the exact email I got.
Reason I started the thread is when I opened the app I couldn’t see anything regarding what the email said.
Unfortunately, that sounds like a nightmare. If information is incorrect based on assumptions, and it favours the person who it’s about, I’d suggest there’s a good number of people who would attempt to do nothing about it.
Additionally, my point about Monzo having a legal requirement to hold accurate information on you, comes from the Data Protection legislation. It has piqued my interest as to how legacy banks can/could manage to not collect this data and make assumptions/report incorrectly, as that seems to go against the spirit of that principle.
The link on the email didn’t work for me. But I just logged into the app, found the request to update my tax residency. It was already correct, however. There was nothing to be updated.
Yeah, I’m not sure if you’re not understanding what I’m saying, which is quite possible, or you’re so fixed on how you feel that you’re not willing to accept there are other views, but it matters not either way, we had a good back and forth and obviously have very different ideas. Anyway, not that it matters as I’ve got a helpful explanation from @HoldenCarver, so all is good.
?
If it’s not changed, there is no need to do anything at all, other than confirm it once a year when prompted by 
This topic was automatically closed 180 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.