FATCA madness

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More than a year ago, the IRS announced that they had 77’000 banks cooperating with them for FATCA.  Robert Wood wrote on that and a bunch of other scary IRS facts for citizens abroad.  (Really, $10’000 for a non-willful FBAR mistake?)

Today, July 18, 2015, the searchable list of Foreign Financial Institutions numbers 168’239 funds or institutions.  The UK alone boasts 23’568 – the first hit being “Mrs E M Brown Grandchildren’s Settlement.”  Other notable entries there: “17th Earl of Pembroke W/T -Lady Pembroke” and “Lord Clinton’s Marriage Settlement – Lady Clinton’s Fund.”  It appears that every fund that wants US investments in its portfolio needs to register with the IRS – and you know that means forms.  Reams of forms, to the tune of several tens of thousand a year, and even more potential data from the institutions that register.  And these forms probably can’t be e-filed, so a few of the roughly 95’000 IRS employees probably get to type those forms into a database and file them in a drawer somewhere.  Assuming 40’000 filings a year, with 9 pages per form printed out single-sided, that’s about five kitchen stoves worth of paper volume just for the registrations.  Of course, these registrations are chump change compared to the number of filings each year.  How do they keep track of all the information they’re gathering? 

What bugs me most about the list of Swiss institutions is that the pension fund I formerly used to use, one that converts part of the savings into a fund, is of course registered here, because they also trade with US shares.  But they’ve bumped me out, because I’m a US citizen and not worth their having to actually keep tabs on me.  (I’m still uncertain whether these tax-deferred voluntary pension schemes are even a good idea at all, just because the US probably doesn’t view them as eligible for any sort of tax deferment.)

So with all these hassles, I’m curious to see if I can even open a bank account in Ellie’s name before getting her registered with Social Security, because Postfinance (and pretty much every other Swiss bank) requires US citizens to fill out a W-9 form that allows them to share information with the IRS when requested.  And of course that form requires a Social Security Number…

At any rate, there will be two more accounts on our FBAR next year.  And for Janet’s sake, I hope that the IRS finally implement a copy-paste function within the PDF document for filing the FBAR, so she doesn’t have to re-type the Postfinance address a dozen times.

Cool mirrors

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My alma mater (I always feel a little weird calling the place where I learned a ton of facts the mother of my soul – certainly there have been more formative presences in my life!) has set up a pretty neat display of how physics, computers, and precision machining can create beauty: prima facie unremarkable mirrors that create pictures by reflecting sunlight onto concrete.  It’s worth the two minute video, though the first ten seconds will give you a good idea of what it looks like.

Baby pool IV: the results

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Eleonora Margaret Stücklin is here, and decided to come a few hours past the astronomical solstice, but still on the 21st of June, the best Father’s Day present I’ve ever received.  Combined with her dimensions and gender she also gave me a less relevant Father’s Day present: winning the baby pool IV.  Because it feels rather goofy to award myself with sweets, I’ll be sending them to the participant who scored worst in every single category.

Here’s how to read the table: Ellie’s data is in the row labeled “actual.”  The row “average” represents the average of all guesses.  All other rows are actual guesses, sorted in order of ascending points.  Every category shows the number of points with which the guess is penalized, and next to it the percentage of the total points contributed by this category.  The coloring scale of the points is relative to the other participants (how well did I do compared to X’s guess?), but the coloring of the percentages is relative to the other categories (how much damage did I do in this category?).

For example, I guessed both the gender and length right, giving me zero points.  Everything is green: I scored best relative to everyone else, and contributed the least to my point total.  However, in the weight category, I was over 200 grams off, so I scored -1.05 points.  Compared to everyone else, that was an ok score: yellow points.  But compared to my point total, this was by far the largest chunk – 85% of my score – and therefore deep red.  The color coding lets you see where you can improve your guessing, and it shows me that the formula probably gives the date too much weight.  If there is ever another pool, I’ll reduce the penalty to 1 point per two days off.

As for the category winners: Sandra and I win the length category, Noah edges out Sandra and Kathy in weight, and I win the date category.  Except for the date, Sandra did a terrific job of getting Ellie’s vital stats – but I checked, even with the reduced date penalty I’d still win the pool.

So here they are: more numbers than you can shake a stick at.