I recently purchased T Bills through Barclay's Bank. One of the condition of placement was that the customer should not be a U.S. person, that is either a citizen of United States of America, a company or a fund manager. Does anyone know why this is so?

NTB

FundamentAli,

It's a headache to keep "separate" records of all transactions done by US Citizens where locally or abroad. Barclays Bank would have been required to submit such records to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The IRS would then use those records to check a particular citizen has indeed disclosed that information when submitting their annual tax returns.

This issue gained momentum in 2008/2009 when the US government believed that some of its citizens (including corporations) were hiding their income abroad and hence under declare on their annual income.

The US therefore sought such information from financial institutions where it believed were being used to move the wealth of US citizens "offshore" and its associated income staying there.

Hence, financial institutions are seeking to "avoid" this headache at all costs. Remember what happened to UBS and Credit Suisse.

Hope this helps.

[quote=FundamentAli]I recently purchased T Bills through Barclay's Bank. /quote]
What is the procedure for doing this as opposed to
doing it via an investment bank?