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I did not attribute anything to anyone, nor did I "make stuff up". My posts express my opinions and my opinions only. Not everything is about you, Mr Everson :)

"HMRC will soon be receiving a huge amount of information" - that's true. Much more than they can handle or have the resources to investigate. I wonder what the threshold for a criminal prosecution is going to be...

Not as far as I know. They don't like companies set up in Caribbean zero-tax jurisdictions. Unless your business has a legitimate African connection (Standard is big in Africa), they will probably say no to you.

I like Standard Bank. They have a 5,000 EUR/USD/GBP minimum deposit requirement, and the onboarding process can take time, but they are a solid, reputable bank.

We are getting slightly off track here. This post was about opening a US account as a non-resident visitor with a foreign passport and no SSN/ITIN. Bottom line, it's more than doable. I've done it (albeit not recently), I know people who have done it, and it's no big whoop.

I respond to each post in order. Do you want me to skip ahead?

Strictly speaking, if you're not resident in the UK, no UK bank will deal with you, period. Tax residency / self-certification is a very recent development - it's a CRS thing. The US is not a signatory and US banks don't have to ask for this information, just like UK or EU banks didn't ask...

FATCA, CRS and other inane laws were never about terrorist financing or money laundering. It's all about tax evasion. The US government couldn't care less about foreigners opening US accounts with foreign addresses that fall outside IRS jurisdiction. If they can't tax them, they don't care about...

Section 326 of the Patriot Act does not specifically require proof of address, only that the bank maintains records of the information used to verify the person's identity. It requires a bank to exercise reasonable efforts to ascertain the identity of each customer.

Why? You don't need to provide your National Insurance number when you open a bank account in the UK, or your PPS number when you open a bank account in Ireland. In most normal countries, banks are not umbilically connected to the tax authorities.

Most banks will ask for a local address, which can be a hotel or a friend you are staying with. I don't see a problem, unless they ask for utility bills, which they don't. An ITIN or SSN is not necessary to open a bank account. Some banks do ask for it (Citibank, JPMorgan Chase and BoA are...

Sure. Before the financial crisis (around 2005), I was able to open an account at Washington Mutual with a foreign passport without any issues. The account was open and active within minutes, and I immediately received a temporary checkbook and debit card. When WaMu collapsed, its banking...

If you have a US company incorporated in Delaware and want to open a bank account in, say, New York, you have to register your Delaware company with the NY DOS. It would then be listed on the NY DOS site as a "foreign corporation" or a "foreign LLC". "Foreign" as in "not a New York State...

US banks will not report the existence or balance of your accounts to your EU jurisdiction, even if there is an IGA. US banks do report interest income for all interest-bearing account holders (including foreign) to the IRS. US taxpayers usually get a 1099-INT form from the bank telling them...

"Out of reach" in what sense? If you want a banking jurisdiction that does not report back to your home country, you would need a non-CRS jurisdiction. There aren't many left, but some are not bad. https://www.oecd.org/tax/transparency/AEOI-commitments.pdf If you want to keep your money in...

Not all FATCA IGAs are bilateral. The IRS announced that they would not engage in reciprocal exchange with foreign countries that do not meet their stringent information safeguard, privacy, and technical standards. Even with countries that have reciprocal IGAs, the amounts of information...

Azerbaijan voluntarily signed up to AEOI information exchange and will start implementing CRS later this year. What's strange is that no-one even asked them to do that - they volunteered. It's an okay banking jurisdiction, but if your goal is to hide your money from the tax authorities in a CRS...

EPB is fine if you are not in a hurry and not doing anything shady. Their compliance team is top-notch and they are very good at spotting suspect transactions. That said, everything is manual and simple wire transfers take days. If everything is in order, GBP/EUR wire transfers post in 2...

It's unlikely. The US authorities already get everything they need on US tax residents from FATCA information exchanges. Why bother trying to figure out who owns what in a complicated corporate structure when you can go straight to the weakest link - the bank account? If a foreign entity...

You only get double-taxed on dividend income if you are a shareholder of a UK limited company (dividends are paid out of distributable income that has already been taxed at the corporate level.) If you are an employee, there is no double taxation - your salary would be fully deductible at the...