My bank closed my account because of FATCA. Now what?

A letter arrives from your bank, or an account manager calls, and the message is some version of the same thing: the bank believes you may be a US person, it needs a completed Form W-9 or a certification of non-US status within a set number of days, and if it doesn’t get one, the account will be restricted or closed. For someone who has never held a US passport, never lived in the US, and possibly never thought of themselves as American in any meaningful sense, this reads like a mistake. It usually isn’t. It’s FATCA doing exactly what it was built to do, and the bank is not choosing to be difficult. It’s protecting itself from a cost it doesn’t want to carry. The fix exists, but it runs through a US tax number and, often, a filing process you haven’t started yet, so the clock the bank gave you and the clock the IRS process actually needs rarely line up on their own.

Why did my bank suddenly want a W-9?

Because FATCA requires it to identify US persons among its account holders and report those accounts to the IRS, or face a 30% withholding tax on its own US-source income.

The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, in force since 2014, puts the compliance burden on the foreign financial institution, not on you directly. Every bank, credit union, and brokerage outside the US has to screen its accounts for US indicators (a US place of birth, a US phone number or address on file, a standing instruction to a US account, among others) and, when one turns up, ask the account holder to either confirm US-person status with a W-9 or certify non-US status. A bank that skips this exposes its own US-source payments, correspondent banking relationships, and investment income to a punitive 30% withholding. That’s not a risk any bank is willing to carry for one account, which is why the letter reads as urgent even when nothing you’ve done triggered it. Something already on file, sometimes a birthplace field filled in years ago without a second thought, is what flagged the account.

The screening itself usually happens on a schedule rather than in response to anything you did recently. Banks run periodic reviews of existing account holders against the FATCA indicator list, not just at account opening, which is why someone who’s banked at the same institution for twenty years can suddenly get a letter out of nowhere. A form filled out at account opening in 2004, before anyone was thinking about FATCA at all, can surface a US place of birth or a US-sounding piece of information that trips the review a decade or two later. The letter isn’t evidence the bank has singled you out. It’s evidence the bank finally ran the check it’s required to run on everyone, and your file happened to contain the flag.

There’s also a cost calculation running underneath the letter that’s worth understanding, because it explains why smaller institutions tend to react faster and harder than large ones. A major bank with thousands of US-person accounts already has the FATCA reporting infrastructure built and amortized across its whole customer base; one more account barely moves the needle. A small credit union or a regional bank with one or two flagged accounts has to build or license that same reporting capability for a tiny fraction of its book, and the ongoing cost of maintaining it, annual filings to the IRS, W-9 collection, recordkeeping, can exceed whatever revenue the account itself generates. Closing the account is, from the bank’s side, simply the cheaper option. It isn’t personal, and no amount of explaining your situation changes the arithmetic on the bank’s side of the ledger.

How common are FATCA account closures?

Common enough that European and Canadian advocacy groups have documented thousands of cases, and it’s a recognized, ongoing problem rather than an isolated glitch.

Groups like AARO and ACA have tracked account closures and service restrictions across France, Switzerland, the UK, and elsewhere in Europe for years, often affecting people with no meaningful US ties beyond an accident of birth or a citizen parent. The core issue for many of them is the same one you may be facing: no Social Security number or ITIN to put on the form the bank is demanding, because they never knew a US filing obligation attached to them in the first place. Some of the documented European cases describe people locked out of mortgages, unable to open a basic checking account as a new resident, or told outright by a bank employee that the institution “doesn’t take Americans,” a blunt but accurate description of a cost-avoidance policy rather than anything specific to the individual customer.

Canada’s major banks generally keep accounts open rather than close them outright, since Canada’s intergovernmental agreement with the US routes reporting through the CRA rather than direct IRS submission, which gives Canadian institutions a somewhat more structured, less ad hoc process than what’s been reported in parts of Europe. That said, Canadian banks still restrict services, flag accounts for enhanced due diligence, freeze certain transaction types, or set real deadlines for a W-9 or a self-certification, and a credit union or smaller regional institution can behave more like the European cases than like a major bank’s call center. The mechanics differ by country and by the size of the institution involved. The underlying pressure, produce a TIN or lose banking access in some form, is consistent everywhere FATCA applies, and it isn’t a phase that resolves itself if you wait it out.

What is the bank actually asking me to prove?

Either that you’re a US person and here’s the tax number to prove it, or that you’re not a US person at all, and it wants one of those two answers in writing, not silence.

If you are, in fact, a US person, whether by birth in the US, birth abroad to a US citizen parent, or naturalization, the bank needs a completed W-9 with your Social Security number or ITIN so it can carry out its FATCA reporting correctly. If you genuinely aren’t a US person, a W-8BEN or an equivalent self-certification closes the matter. The problem shows up when someone is a US person under the law but doesn’t have a TIN yet, sometimes because they never knew about the citizenship or the filing requirement until this letter arrived. Signing a W-8BEN in that situation, certifying non-US status when the law says otherwise, is a false certification with its own exposure, both to you and to the bank that relied on it. The honest answer, when the facts point to US-person status, is to start the TIN application and tell the bank that’s what’s happening, not to sign whichever form makes the letter go away fastest.

This is also where it’s worth pausing on the citizenship question itself rather than assuming the bank already has it right, or that a family story settles it either way. A US place of birth on file is straightforward: birth in the US, outside a narrow set of exceptions, means US citizenship regardless of how briefly the family lived there or how long ago the move back happened. Citizenship by descent, through a US citizen parent, is less obvious from the bank’s side and depends on that parent’s own US residency history before your birth, specifically whether they met the physical-presence thresholds under the Immigration and Nationality Act. A bank that flags an account because a customer once mentioned a US parent has no way of checking whether the descent rule was actually met. It’s checking a box, not making a legal determination, which means the honest first step on your end is confirming the citizenship fact pattern rather than accepting the bank’s assumption or, just as easily, dismissing it because “that doesn’t sound right.”

Can I fight the account closure?

Legally, rarely, since banks in most jurisdictions have wide discretion to end a customer relationship, but the notice period and the bank’s willingness to work with you both depend on showing active progress.

France has passed legislation requiring banks to maintain basic account services for citizens regardless of FATCA status, a direct legislative response to the closures its own advocacy groups documented. Canada has no equivalent law. The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada’s guidance calls for reasonable notice before an account is closed, and in practice most Canadian banks give 30 to 90 days and will extend that window for a customer who’s visibly working through the SSN or ITIN application and a streamlined filing rather than ignoring the letter. What moves a bank isn’t a legal argument about your right to the account. It’s evidence that the compliance problem the bank is worried about is actually being resolved, on a timeline it can see.

Complaining to the bank’s ombudsman or filing a complaint with FCAC can sometimes buy a few extra weeks, but it doesn’t change the outcome if the underlying W-9 or self-certification never arrives. Regulatory complaint processes are built to check that the bank followed its own disclosed procedures and gave adequate notice, not to force a bank to keep an account open indefinitely against its own risk policy. Treat a complaint as a way to slow the clock a little while the real fix, the TIN application and the filing behind it, moves forward, not as a substitute for that work. The banks that do extend deadlines without a complaint being filed at all are almost always responding to the customer showing up with a plan already in motion, an engagement letter from a CPA, a submitted W-7 or SSN application, a stated date the streamlined package will be ready. That’s the leverage that actually works, far more reliably than an appeal to fairness.

I don’t have an SSN or ITIN. What now?

You apply for one immediately, because this is almost always the longest step in the whole process and the one most likely to blow past the bank’s deadline if you wait to start it.

Many accidental Americans have never had a Social Security number, and applying through a US consulate typically takes several weeks to a few months depending on the post and the season. An ITIN application, filed on Form W-7, generally moves faster but still commonly takes six to ten weeks, and it has to be coordinated with the rest of a streamlined filing package rather than submitted on its own. During that waiting period you may genuinely have no number to give the bank, which is a real gap, not a paperwork failure on your part. Some banks accept an interim letter from a CPA or tax attorney confirming the application is in process and naming an expected timeline; others require the number itself before they’ll lift a restriction. Ask your bank directly which it will accept, and get that interim documentation in hand early rather than assuming it exists as a standard option. The full ITIN application guide for Canadian filers covers the W-7 documentation and submission mechanics in detail, including which route, SSN or ITIN, actually applies to someone with US citizenship by descent versus someone without it.

Which lane you’re in, SSN or ITIN, matters and it’s easy to get wrong. A person who’s a US citizen, whether by birth in the US or by descent, generally applies for a Social Security number rather than an ITIN, because the citizenship already exists and the SSN is the correct identifying number for a citizen regardless of where they live. An ITIN is built for people who need a US taxpayer identification number without being a citizen or resident alien, which is a different fact pattern entirely. Applying for the wrong one, or having a return rejected because the identifying number doesn’t match the filer’s actual status, adds weeks to a timeline that’s already tight against a bank deadline. This is worth confirming with a CPA before submitting anything, not after a rejection notice arrives.

The consulate route for an SSN application also has its own friction that’s easy to underestimate from outside the process. Many consulates require an in-person appointment, and appointment availability at busy posts can itself run six to eight weeks out before you even get in the door to submit the paperwork, on top of the processing time that follows. If you’re near a bank deadline, book that appointment the day you decide to move forward, even before every supporting document is fully assembled, and gather the rest of the file while you wait for the appointment date to arrive.

What happens to the account once I’m compliant?

The bank gets its completed W-9, its FATCA reporting obligation is satisfied, and the account stays open and functions normally going forward.

Once you have an SSN or ITIN and have filed through the Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures, or otherwise brought your US filings current, you give the bank the W-9 it originally asked for. From that point, the bank reports the account to the IRS annually under FATCA, which is its obligation, not yours; you’re not the one filing that report. Your own obligations continue on a separate, parallel track: annual Form 1040 filings, FBAR (FinCEN 114) if your combined foreign account balances ever cross $10,000 on any day of the year, and Form 8938 if your specified foreign assets cross the relevant threshold. Form 8938 versus FBAR walks through why both forms often apply to the same accounts and how the thresholds and filing locations differ. None of that is new risk created by the bank’s letter. It’s the ongoing compliance picture that existed the moment the citizenship did, and the letter is simply what made it visible.

What should I not do right now?

Don’t ignore the letter, don’t sign a W-8BEN if the facts say you’re a US person, and don’t assume closing the account yourself or moving the money elsewhere makes the underlying filing obligation disappear.

Ignoring the letter doesn’t buy time. It runs the clock down to the deadline with nothing started, which is the single most common reason these situations end in an actual closure rather than an extension. Signing a false non-US certification to make the letter go away creates its own exposure, both because it’s inaccurate and because the bank relied on it when it shouldn’t have. Moving assets to a different account or a different bank doesn’t help either; the Common Reporting Standard means most cross-border moves get flagged somewhere else, and even a domestic move just relocates the same disclosure problem to a new institution with a new deadline. Closing the account yourself, thinking that ends the FATCA question entirely, misses the point: the US filing obligation existed for every year you held the account, not only the year the bank happened to ask about it, and it doesn’t disappear because the account itself is gone.

What should I do next?

Get the SSN or ITIN application moving this week, and let a CPA sequence the streamlined filing behind it so the two pieces land together instead of stalling separately.

If you’re not sure whether you’re actually a US person at all, that question has to be answered before anything else, since it decides whether a W-9 or a self-certification is the honest form to file. From there, the streamlined filing guide and the ITIN application guide cover the two pieces that have to move in parallel. A few places to go deeper on the surrounding pieces:

• Never filed US taxes as an accidental American: what to do
• Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures, the full mechanics
• How to apply for an ITIN as a Canadian
• Form 8938 versus FBAR: do you file both?
• FBAR penalties decision tree: delinquent, streamlined, or VDP
• Streamlined filing for Americans outside Canada, if you’re in Europe, the Middle East, or elsewhere and the bank closure is the trigger for catching up

If the account letter surfaced a broader question, whether you owe US returns at all and for how many years back, that’s worth settling as its own first step rather than assuming the full scope from the bank’s letter alone.

This guide is general information, not tax advice for your specific situation. Which points apply, and how, depends on your facts.