Liberty and justice for all United States persons abroad

The Isaac Brock Society

1,012 thoughts on “FATCA Discussion Thread (Ask your questions) Part One”

  1. IMPLEMENTING FATCA – WILL EATING THE ELEPHANT ONE BITE AT A TIME WORK?

    An acquaintance recently attended a FATCA Symposium in New York, put by a organization comprised of members of the FATCA Compliance Complex.  This was for Financial Institution professionals who need to learn the ABCs of FATCA that the are all certain they will be enforcing.

    They had extensive Power Point presentations, and if you are interested in the education that is being put out for the Practitioner and Compliance members, this might interest you.

    I offer this up, in the spirit of KYE, or Know Your Enemy. If that is too harsh a characterization, then know what the Treasury Co-enablers are teaching about how to conduct compliance operations. 

    The Section labeled Presentations is where you will find the Power Point Decks in PDF form. Of course, a lot of what is here, is just the major points without the detailed discussion that went along with them, and no videos are posted.  Still, it is helpful to see what folks are being trained to do. 

    The opening sentence is certainly true….  

    Once the rules implementing FATCA are finalized and become effective, the 2010 law will fundamentally alter the relationships financial firms maintain with their clients and each other.

  2. Meet FATCA, it Turns Every Financial Institution on the Planet into IRS Agents
    Is it my impression, or are more bloggers and stories about FATCA becoming more prevalent?   Maybe it is just because I am searching, so see more of what I want to see.

     At a time when many Americans are literally leaving America and venturing to foreign shores that are hospitable and welcoming to wealth building productivity, FATCA is an overt act to forever hunt them down like criminals and seize their assets.

  3. @just me

    I think there has been an uptick in FATCA related articles, at least in the number of better quality ones, imo. 

  5. @just me

    interesting link. I assume that the articles are those with “FATCA” in the headline only? So many don’t.

  8. When does the Obama/Geitner team believe that Eritrea will be signing up for their IGA?  Don’t we need to be searching them out in USA and reporting them back to their government?  Besides being a part of the Coalition of the Willing, they also have their own wars to finance.

  10. GATCA the objective of FATCA — Always listen to Just Me’s comments…

    http://www.finextra.com/Community/FullBlog.aspx?blogid=7202

    Of course, all of this is just talk at the moment. Actually putting it into operation is a whole different story. To make this a reality, financial institutions will need to get more acquainted with KYT and KYP –Know Your Technology and Know Your Processes – because to do all of this, you need to automate as much as you can and ensure you have the workflow and processes underpinning it to make it as smooth and efficient as possible. As I’ve written about before, many financial institutions are looking to supplement their chosen FATCA solutions with flexible online portals to collect additional information securely and efficiently from clients and make it as easy and unobtrusive as possible for them.

    Indeed, the ability to future-proof technology to make it as flexible and configurable as possible was a distinct theme at the conference, where questions were being raised about the French mini-FATCA model and the persistent rumours of a UK FATCA. In fact, one global institution stated that they were making their FATCA technology implementation as nationality-neutral as possible to pave the way for a more globally widespread tax initiative. I would go one step forward and recommend that institutions solve the classification challenge rather than the FATCA challenge – because from 2013 onwards, we are set to see far more regulations coming on-stream that will demand a similar classification approach to FATCA (Dodd-Frank, LEI, MiFID II, Basel III, 4th EU Money Laundering Directive to name but a few).

    By simply making sure your FATCA technology solution (KYT) and processes (KYP) are flexible enough to adapt to additional regulations (FATCA and non-FATCA alike), you can pave the way towards
    Richer, more meaningful client data (KYD)
    Stronger compliance and adherence to CDD / KYC regulations
    Improved risk management and increased protection for your institution (KYR).

  12. US group offers better idea for collecting taxes abroad

    “GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – There’s a better way for the IRS, the US tax office, to collect money, a group of US citizens says, noting that it is “alarmed and vexed” at costly and cumbersome Fatca legislation the US is enacting. Its suggestions were unveiled Saturday in London.

    The ACA proposal “would replace the current citizenship-based taxation with residence-based taxation,  under which American residents overseas would pay taxes on a basis very similar to that applied to non-resident aliens, with US-source income withheld at source. This would align US tax policy with that of virtually every other country on the planet. In addition, ACA calculates that implementing the new proposal would dramatically improve tax receipts to the US Treasury and improve the US export picture”, the group says in a statement issued 8 December.”

  14. http://www.norden.org/en/nordic-council-of-ministers/council-of-ministers/council-of-ministers-for-finance-mr-finans/tax-information-exchange-agreements/tax-information-exchange-agreements

    more of the same, a bit wider discussion.

    The objective of signing an information exchange agreement is give the tax authorities insight into the capital investments placed in the tax haven by those liable to taxation. Such agreements can lead to exposure of assets and incomes which have not been declared in the country of residence and can reduce interest in using these tax havens for the purposes of tax evasion.

    The OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) has identified about 50 states which have bank secrecy legislation for offshore financial centres. The majority of the larger OECD countries are today actively engaged in negotiations with these offshore financial centres (tax havens) to agree on tax information exchange agreements. These negotiations will focus chiefly on the 35 tax havens which have made a commitment to the OECD to improve transparency and information exchange agreements for taxation.

    The Nordic negotiations are expected to lead to the signing of further agreements in 2012. The work is scheduled to be completed in December 2012

     

    \

  18. Joint statement from Jersey and Guernsey on FATCA
    GATCA! 

     “In our ongoing discussions with the UK Government we will be pressing them to make clear the steps they are taking to promote the adoption of automatic exchange of information worldwide to ensure that a level playing field is achieved for all finance centres competing in the global market place.”

  20. Another story on the 

    United Kingdom and Isle of Man to sign FATCA

    Under the enhanced information exchange agreement, the UK and Isle of Man will automatically exchange a wide range of information on tax residents, on a reciprocal basis. To minimise burdens on financial institutions the agreement will follow, as closely as practicable, the UK-US Agreement to Improve International Tax Compliance and to Implement FATCA. The agreement will be concluded to the same timetable as the agreement currently being negotiated between the Isle of Man and the United States. 

    Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, David Gauke said: 

    “This agreement will significantly boost the UK’s ability to tackle cross-border tax evasion. Automatic information exchange is an important tool in boosting HMRC’s ability to clamp down on those who seek to hide their money overseas. Our ground breaking agreement with the US sets a new standard in international tax transparency and today’s agreement between the UK and Isle of Man to move to much greater levels of automatic exchange is the next step in this process. 

  21. @Mark Twain

    Any doubt now that there is a GATCA in the works?  The OECD are ‘Happy as Larry,’ as the Aussies say, that the US is spearing heading this effort with FATCA.  It was just what they needed to make their wet dream come true.   

  22. You know, I can’t see that it’s effects would be so terrible if it were implemented as the Eu implements it—just report the interest.  Yeah, it’s paperwork and someone might get screwed if it went further than just the paperwork.

    But with FATCA, it’s about retroactively screwing good US person tax-filers for having done something they were actively non-instructed to do.  But now we know that all US persons are pariahs, FATCATS, RICH, GLOBAL ELITES, AND ECONOMIC NON-PATRIOTS.

    My thoughts are just that the Nodick countries would love to sign off on the IGA, as they know that they want their residents’  accounts in USA as much as they want to get the accounts in the Caribbean and Swiss. And I’m not impressed that they would take the effort to investigate the effects upon any human being.

    You’ve seen the pictures of the scandinavian big boat called “Black Money” and the dinghy with the name “My Taxes”—–back in the 80’s everything in Scandinavia was done in cash.  Today the goal is to do it behind the guise of a corporate purchase.

  23. From the BBC…Jersey and Guernsey say tax regulation should be global

    Jersey and Guernsey do not want to sign up to a tax exchange agreement with the UK unless it is a global regulation.

    Officials have met members of the UK government to talk about the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA).

    Jersey and Guernsey both have tax information exchange agreements which means they agree to share information on a case-by-case basis.

    But the UK wants to adopt the new FATCA regulation, used in the US, which would make this automatic for the islands.

    The FATCA rules will force US taxpayers to declare financial assets held overseas and overseas financial institutions to report on assets owned by US taxpayers.

    GATCA!

  24. This article ‘The New Duty to Report Foreign Financial Assets on Form 8938:
    Demystifying the Complex Rules and Severe Consequences of Noncompliance’ By Hale Sheppard has an attachment to the very clear and well written article he wrote about what the FATCA form filing for individuals entails. Good if you have to explain what the impact of the complexities created by the “super-FBAR” FATCA is on the individual filing side – in addition to the impact of FATCA on the banks and account holders in non-US countries.

    http://taxblawg.net/2012/07/15/the-new-duty-to-report-foreign-financial-assets-on-form-8938-demystifying-the-complex-rules-and-severe-consequences-of-noncompliance/

    This may have been posted somewhere at IBS already, but worth having another look given the upcoming FATCApalooza IBS conference.

  25. FATCA rules are bound to create a number of conflicts with local legislation, such as:

    • the obligation to identify, document and screen clients to an extent that goes largely beyond European AML-KYC laws;
    • the obligation to report automatically to the IRS on US and also non US clients;
    • the obligation to close accounts of US and also non US clients that do not comply with the information requirements;
    • the obligation to apply US withholding tax to non US persons under an obscure “pass-thru” concept that transforms non US income into US income;
    • the obligation to waive Double Taxation Agreement rights under the concept of “election to be withheld upon”.
       

    http://www.abbl.lu/de/node/36685

    Would one of our FATCA experts be kind enough to explain what point #4 is?

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