By coincidence (?) I received messages from IB today, indicating that my US tax forms 1042 for 2018 had been updated. I am not familiar with these forms and can't immediately see what modifications were made. Is this related to the topic of "sources of wealth"? Or indeed, just a coincidence?
IB: "...terminate our relationship with you..."
- Thread starter FutureScalper
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I got the same msg for around 2 weeks till Friday when i got another email asking me to submit beside the asset declaration other 2 statements related to mkt profit and wife income. This is related to the vague finance window discussed earlierin their portal. It’s this related to the current financial situation or the source of funds? It’s not written anywhere. So that is why basically i mentioned all three options in that window. However speaking with technical support from India i was informed that they may need the source of funds which basically make sense since i didn’t deposit any fund worth a note since the open of the first account more than 5 years ago. So i think i will submit all the ib statements (lol) related to market profits and last month salary of my wife related to current financial situation . And i will try to show tax statements if i am able to find out related to the first wire on the first account done more than 5 years ago. So basically this should clear out the risk of money laundering for them which i believe is the culprit of the problem i am trying to guess. Other than that i really don’t know what to do. It’s really frustrating trying to figure out what they really wanna and concerning the fact they are asking documents after more than 5 years since account opening without any detail. When i first saw “SOW” I actually thought was statements of work so i didn’t reply. Now they are giving me 3 business days and besides their app sucks as the upload limit is just one document. I hope someone will take note of this behavior and beside i am not sure i feel as being treated fair here. Wtf i am not in front of IRS.
same here. They updated same year and i am not familiar too with this form. They just mentioned we updated year 2018 form.
I had the same messages about the same forms yesterday. Not sure what to make of it.
I hear you. Some of my documents are in Europe and I have no way of getting to them. After repeatedly questioning them about the "source of funds" vs "source of wealth" discrepancies in their system, that was fixed a few weeks back.
Received the same notification, you can find the history of amendments on this form in your account management, checked and it looks benign, IB changed the gross income for a few 100 USD in the first income page, for which there are no taxes to be paid, very small amount for the size of the acct.
Living in Europe and moved recently from Asia, been through quite a few nightmarish experiences over the years (for corporate accounts mostly, personal accounts have been easier to manage), your stories are worrying.
Good luck all, dealing with compliance is always a waste of time and sometimes also a loss of money.
@Collagen , @d08 , @luisHK Thank you all for your replies.
I do have the impression that the changes made to the 1042 forms are very minor. That could explain why I initially didn't even notice any changes.
The whole "sources of wealth" thing continues to confuse me. I hope that I have meanwhile been able to send the right thing (I'm not sure about that). And if not, that IB will be able to specify more precisely what it is that they want to receive from me. Wait and see.
I do have the impression that the changes made to the 1042 forms are very minor. That could explain why I initially didn't even notice any changes.
The whole "sources of wealth" thing continues to confuse me. I hope that I have meanwhile been able to send the right thing (I'm not sure about that). And if not, that IB will be able to specify more precisely what it is that they want to receive from me. Wait and see.
Yes, I did get that from them as well. I submitted documents, but then they contacted me again requesting more documents (Which I am yet to see what exactly are those).
They are asking me the source of my funds after 14 years of opening & funding my account with them!!! (Given that I haven't deposited any money into the account in the last 5 years, with the exception of a $400 wire from my HSBC bank account).
I don't really understand what they are doing. If I wire money from a reputable well-regulated bank (HSBC), they must understand that my bank already did AML checks against those funds.
I can understand they do this for some clients who wire funds from unknown banks in suspicious jurisdictions, but I have always used global banks in my wire transfers (14 years back I funded my account from a Societe Generale JV).
It's true I am a non-US resident, which for their compliance, makes it harder & more suspicious, but what's all the fuss about a $100k account?
Why would this be required by the US government? And why the only broker out there asking it's clients about this is IB and no other broker is asking for it (If it's a US government request?)
For the case of a US-citizen, why the US government is asking IB to get the SOW of it's clients, why aren't they doing this through the IRS instead, which I believe they already have this information.
I don't really believe this is a US government request. IB compliance wants to know the source of wealth of their customers in anticipation that when those customers wire-funds to their accounts in the future, they can immediately identify if those funds are legitimate/clean or not (Based on the SOW documents they submitted earlier) and consequently they can detect suspicious cases/funds at a very early stage.
my take on this matter is close to what d08 said. They are actively tracking non US citizens which live and so have declared an account in a different jurisdiction of their citizenship (following the rules). Unfortunately this open a can of worms as We become actively tracked by US government and local jurisdiction if there is a tax treaty involved. The other issue is that IB seems not to be involved specifically but an independent 3rd party office. My guess is that this is related to the penalty IB has recently suffered by SEC. However the IB responsibility since we are customers of them is that They should have technical support with knowledge on this matter that explain us clearly what is going on and help us to manage this bureaucracy burdens apart of risk involved. Again because some big fish did all the mess now we are all going to suffer this. Personally I am really concerned as the grade of scrutiny we are facing right now We never ever seen before. And we are talking about a brokerage account...
Which US citizens are getting SOW requests? Nobody here that seems to be involved is a US citizen I believe. Are you?
Did you not read that IB was recently fined by US authorities for "failing to comply with AML rules"? This is what it's connected to quite obviously.
I'm quite certain they can be penalized again for non-compliance if they did nothing. IB alone would never initiate this -- they're losing customers and have a massive additional workload.
Agreed. My SOW document is open until now. I've asked what is specifically additionally required and I get replies along the lines of "do your best". Unnerving.
Yup. The world is moving from "innocent until proven guilty" to "guilty until proven innocent". By default it seems you're assumed to have done something wrong and they're just looking for a reason, any reason to go after you.
I used to think the anti-government rural doomsday folks were crazy but as time goes by, they might have been rights -- governments will push people more and more until there is nothing left and the system cracks.