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I read that some funds cannot be invested as a "US Persons" (= US fiscal resident, green holder, or US citizen) from a French bank account.

For example, I saw this warning in one plan d'épargne en actions (PEA) on Fortuneo regarding the Amundi Funds - Equity Euroland Small Cap AE-C:

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Translation:

This fund cannot be invested as a "US Persons" (= US fiscal resident, green card holder, or US citizen).

What kind of funds cannot be invested as a "US Persons" (= US fiscal resident, green card holder, or US citizen) from a French bank account? Is that restriction specific to PEA and/or Fortuneo?

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The U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) requires foreign financial institutions to report accounts of U.S. persons to U.S. authorities. The U.S. are fairly unusual in that they impose taxes based on citizenship and not just based on location of the person or location of the income.

This makes compliance for financial institutions cumbersome and costly. For non-U.S. institutions, one option for compliance is to not do business with U.S. persons. You have found one of many examples where a financial product is not offered to U.S. persons. It is at the choice of the financial institution whether they offer a particular product to a customer, unless they are subject to regulations that require the product to be offered to anyone (e.g. some checking accounts). Funds typically have more complex tax implications and are therefore less likely to be offered to U.S. persons.

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    That's citizenship or long-term residence ('green card') or tax residence (which apparently became 'fiscal' in French). Although FATCA is aimed mostly at people who do live in US and 'shouldn't' need foreign accounts; for people subject to US tax but actually living elsewhere the FATCA reporting thresholds are higher (doubled). And depending on the inter-governmental agreement, retirement investments (i.e. analogous to an IRA) are often exempted; I don't know how that applies to France (and to the extent I understand the page on PEA it's medium-term but not retirement).
    – dave_thompson_085
    Jan 18, 2019 at 23:13

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