EconoWeirdness

Exposing the madness wehind current economic thought

Monday, March 11, 2013

Biggest gold storage company dumps US citizens

ViaMat is literally the gold standard in secure storage. They have vaults from Switzerland to Dubai to Hong Kong, and they count among their clients some of the largest mining companies in the world. They know what they're doing.

And now they're dumping US citizens. ViaMat does a great deal of business within the US. As such, the company is heavily exposed to the insane US regulatory environment. As an example, the 2010 Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) turned into more than 500 pages of regulation! The costs and risks associated with compliance simply became too much for ViaMat to bear:

We are currently experiencing rapid and substantial changes in the general regulations within this business. The changes mainly relate to the tax structures and taxation systems of various countries. As a consequence of these changes VIA MAT INTERNATIONAL has taken the decision to stop offering this service at its vault [sic] outside of the US to private customers with potential US-tax liability.

Sovereignman.com adds:

the big gold depositories like Gold Money and Bullion Vault ALL use ViaMat as a primary secure storage provider. So it is only a matter of time before ViaMat's decision cascades across these other firms.
most gold storage firms are all essentially different varieties of the exact same product. They are retail marketing channels that ultimately use ViaMat to store their gold bars. If ViaMat has US exposure, THEY have US exposure. It is the same risk.