For those who want ONLY the “Readers Digest” version of this post …
This is a long but important post. For some the post will be too long to read and digest. The post is about Fidelity. Those of a certain age will associate Fidelity with legendary fund manager Peter Lynch author of “One Up On Wall Street“.
There is an international trend of financial firms avoiding U.S. citizens. This post is specifically about Fidelity UK (1) refusing to accept U.S. citizens as clients and (2) proactively ridding their client base of those who they know are U.S. citizens or have reason to believe “may be” U.S. citizens!
I recently became aware of the following letter sent by Fidelity U.K. to certain undesirables …
Unconfirmed USP Sell To Cash Letter
Some of you may be satisfied to read the letter.
For those interested in the general context and discussion, here is the complete post …
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Part A – Introduction and context
This is Part 5 in a series of posts that I began writing in 2023. See the Appendix for links to all of the previous posts. The context of this series of posts is that FATCA IGAs require “foreign financial institutions” to provide the U.S. Social Security numbers of their U.S. citizen customers. This is a problem because:
1. The banks cannot provide to the IRS what they sometimes don’t have.
2. Many Americans abroad do NOT have a Social Security number to provide.
3. Many former U.S. citizens have relinquished U.S. citizenship without necessarily having a Certificate of Loss of Nationality (“CLN”).