No interest, dividend or income is generated through using BullionVault.
The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) is a US law that combats tax evasion by US nationals who have financial accounts outside the US.
BullionVault is subject to British legislation, and in June 2014 Britain implemented an Agreement reached between the UK and USA with regard to FATCA (the Agreement). The Agreement is necessary because the Data Protection Act precludes UK businesses from passing the requested information to the US. Under the terms of the Agreement any UK Financial Institution will provide HMRC with the required information. HMRC will then forward that information to the US.
We have taken advice as to our obligations under the terms of the legislation enacting that Agreement and are satisfied that we have no reporting obligations (beyond what is already required by the Money Laundering Regulations 2007). Should the law or our business model change forcing us to become a reporting entity we would of course inform our customers and in due course comply.
We know of no valid reason why any institution remitting a customer’s money to us would impose a withholding tax. Were an institution to do so we would – upon the user’s request – return the funds received to source, with a deduction only in respect of bank fees applied to us.
When BullionVault discloses your identity, and when it does not
In the normal course of business BullionVault does not report customer information or activity to any organisation or government anywhere in the world.
However we do make reports in two special circumstances.
Firstly, where the activity of any client gives us reasonable cause for suspecting money laundering we make a report of the circumstances to the appropriate British authorities and subsequently act as instructed by them.
Secondly we submit to specific British Court Orders. The British Courts issue us with such orders wherever, from time to time, any respected investigating authority, whether British or foreign, makes a lawful request for disclosure in the course of a criminal investigation into a named BullionVault account holder.
We do not oppose or obstruct investigating authorities making these requests where the party under investigation is named. We let the Court decide on the merits of the case presented, and we obey the Court’s instructions accordingly.
Although I will not disclose detail about such reports it may be appropriate to say that both of the above circumstances are rare. Under the above policy BullionVault has reported customer activity in about 10 cases, from more than 50,000 customers.
Paul Tustain (CEO)
September 2014
