Originally Posted by
Pearly White
Are you being paid in the US, or into a US based bank account?
If not, I wouldn't worry.
No, and no (in my case at least).
But US or US-based doesn't matter. If you're a US citizen then any bank account (or income) anywhere in the world is subject to the long arm of the US IRS. It's called FATCA, went into effect on 1st June 2010, (which coincidentally was the effective date of J. Slosar's citizenship being revised from American to Chinese) under which the requirements for reporting are heavy and the penalties for non-reporting are heavier.
It has become so bad that some banks will refuse to open accounts for US citizens simply because the overhead laid on the bank for reporting/record-keeping is large.
I learned a lot during the whole episode and in the time since which convinced me that CX HR / mgmt had little credibility when discussing the topic. Judging from the current thread it looks like they have not gotten any better. At the time I became convinced that CX did it as part of a deal struck with the IRS to get them out of the mess they made concerning the US crew bases. Sounds like they've repeated the same approach now.