An English-language news website based in Amsterdam has become the latest non-U.S. media organization to highlight the struggles that overseas-resident Americans – "accidental or otherwise", as it says in its headline – are having, in dealing with the U.S. tax evasion-prevention law known as FATCA. 

A Dutch financial arbitration body known as KiFiD has ruled that a local banking operation of Dutch financial services giant Aegon was within its rights to close the savings account of one of its clients who has dual American and Dutch citizenship, because it did so as part of a larger business decision to close the part of its Dutch business in which the account was held to all of its clients in that operation.

Over the last few years, thousands of so-called "accidental Americans" have grudgingly accepted the unexpected news that the U.S. considers them to be U.S. citizens, even though they had lived their entire lives, since birth, as citizens of other countries – and as a result of this news, are considered to have tax-reporting and potentially tax-paying obligations.

Accidental Americans who live in the Netherlands have been told that banks in the country have agreed not to require either their Social Security numbers or Certificate of Loss of Nationality in order to keep their accounts open until Sept. 1, 2022.

This coming Tuesday, members of the Dutch House of Representatives will once again take up the issue of the American tax evasion prevention law known as FATCA, and the problems it is continuing to cause for thousands of Dutch citizens with mostly historic links to the U.S.

The Paris-based Association of Accidental Americans (AAA) said it has today filed a "request for enforcement" with the Dutch Data Protection Authority (Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens), in which it said it is "demanding an immediate halt to the automatic transfer of European citizens’ personal data to the United States," as part of the Dutch government's compliance with the U.S. tax evasion-prevention law known as FATCA.

Over the last few years, thousands of so-called "accidental Americans" have quietly accepted the unexpected news that the U.S. considered them to be U.S. citizens, even though they had lived their entire lives as citizens of other countries, and as a result of this news, gone through the expensive business of complying with U.S. demands that they sort out their U.S. citizenship and tax situation.

American expats who live in the Netherlands are unable to cash the latest round of U.S. CARES Act stimulus checks at any Dutch bank, as the last bank willing to cash such checks, ING, has stopped doing so.

Two of the Netherlands' largest banks, ABN AMRO and Rabobank, are also prepared to close the bank accounts of "unintentional Americans" if these individuals "do not cooperate with the U.S. requirements" that they provide tax information numbers, such as a Social Security number, or evidence that they have entered into the U.S. system for relinquishing their citizenships, according to a report published on Friday on the news website NRC.nl.

A decision is expected within the next four weeks in a case involving a retired Dutch airline pilot who has gone to court to keep his Dutch bank account, rather than give in to the bank's demands, and enter the U.S. tax identification system.