On Tuesday, June 17, 2014 we originally posted "Did You Receive a Swiss Bank Letter Asking You to Confirm That You Are Compliant with US Tax Law?" where we discussed that numerous clients of our firm have requested advice on how to respond to letters from their Swiss Bankers asking them to confirm that they are US tax compliance.

We advise taxpayers not to be fooled into thinking that answering these letters or providing this information will somehow benefit you the client! Your account will be turned over to the U.S. Treasury Department, as an account associated with a US beneficiary, whether you respond to this banks request or not!  

This is solely for the bank's benefit, so that they can  categorize your account as a "Tax  Compliant Account" which will then not be subject to the 20% penalty imposed by the U.S. Treasury Department against your Swiss Banker.

However having reflected on  this blog post; there is one instance where a US individual is otherwise compliant, it might not be a bad idea to comply with the Swiss banks request, so they can classify this particular account as US tax compliant.

This may have the additional benefit of possibly not resulting in this particular Swiss bank account being turned over to the US; since it will be classified by the Swiss Bank as "US tax compliant". But there's no guarantee of this result.