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FATCA overview

Retail Banking and Wealth Management – India

There are a number of substantial changes being made by financial regulators, governments and banks to ensure the protection and long-term safety of both the financial system and our customers’ interests.

One of these regulations is the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), effective 1 July 2014. This is a new piece of legislation by the United States Department of Treasury and the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to counter tax evasion in the US.

FATCA will affect many of HSBC’s personal and business customers. The degree to which customers will be affected will vary across the bank, depending on the type of account, policy or agreement they hold with HSBC.

Impact to HSBC and our customers

HSBC is proud of our commitment to being fully FATCA compliant in all countries where we operate. Other banks and financial organisations will also be affected. However, their approach to adopting FATCA may differ to that of HSBC.

The purpose of FATCA is to report financial assets owned by United States persons to the United States tax authorities. Accordingly, Government of India may collect information from banks and onward submit it to United States authorities. We may be contacting you to request further information or documentation in order to establish your status in accordance with the FATCA requirements.

Please note that you may receive more than one request for information if you have multiple relationships with different members of the HSBC Group. Therefore, it is important that you respond to all requests, even if you believe you have already supplied the requested information.


Additional information

W-9: This is a link to the withholding certificate referred to as a ‘W9’ on the IRS website. This form is completed to confirm US tax status.

W-8: This is a link to the withholding certificates referred to as ‘W8s’ on the IRS website. This is a series of forms that are completed to confirm non-US tax status.

In order to provide customers with further support when completing IRS W forms, we have provided some additional customer guidance for the forms W-9 and W-8BEN.

 

(Page last updated April 2020)