The Chicago Tribune reports: IRS not fully ready for law against offshore tax evasion: watchdog
One of the signs of a bad regulatory law is the inability of a government bureaucracy to implement it. The IRS apparently suffers from inadequate resources. Whereas Obama signed FATCA into law in 2010, the IRS is not ready to handle load nearly four years later:
Between 200,000 and 400,000 foreign banks, investment funds and insurers companies are expected to register with the IRS to comply with the law, TIGTA said.
This would be hilarious if the consequences of FATCA weren’t already so sad. Still, I experience great Schadenfreude over the farcical incompetence of the IRS.
This is an illustration of the hubris of United States which forces on all the world a system that they themselves can’t handle. Reality and satire stand together.
When US Ambassador Jacobson said “sit tight” what he probably meant is (I paraphrase), “FATCA won’t be implemented for years because of IRS incompetence. So just sit tight and nothing will happen for a long, long time. In fact, the IRS will never catch up with you if you procrastinate.” Excellent advice if you ask me.
On the other hand, it might be good to get down to a US Consulate and get yourself free, for you will want to avoid the rush that will happen post-FATCA implementation.
By the way, The Renunciation Guide is back online.
@Em, I’m vulnerable to my phone’s auto edit, *lol*
@ monalisa
Luckily we have a Quicker Fixer Upper here who makes some of our typos go poof! Thank you, QFU. 🙂
Another article about the TIGTA report, this time from the Wall Street Journal:
Watchdog Finds Problems with FATCA Registration System
Comments needed over there.
In the report posted here:
http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2013/12/06/sit-tight-even-the-irs-is-not-ready-for-fatca-boondoggle/comment-page-1/#comment-766547
TIGTA stated their concerns regarding inadequate “security controls”, among other thing going forward with FATCA. Maybe they’ve been reading posts like this elsewhere:
““200,000 and 400,000 foreign financial institutions”
That is a big number. What stops someone from registering a fake financial institution? With so many application, it should be easy to get something to slip through the cracks. I could say I’m a small bank in Thailand. Then I could use fake SSN’s and report fake holdings on real Americans. Then I could do this with a distributed network of hacked computers. Then I could do this 100,000 times. On the surface, it seems it would be easy to gum up the system with lots of fake information.”
and,
“The whole IRS web portal for FATCA registration looks like it was designed by a 7th grader as part of a school “build your own website” project. Having personally registered several entities (real, not fake ones) I haven’t stopped laughing about how amateurish this is. The IRS just looks like they couldn’t organize a piss up at a brewery. As a people have stated the IRSs database will be no doubt full of fake entities and they will not be capable of sorting out the real ones from the fakes.”
http://blogs.wsj.com/riskandcompliance/2013/12/09/watchdog-finds-problems-with-fatca-registration-system/
A bunch of Americans working in banana plantations is one thing, but thousands of Americans working overseas in the tech sector?
@bubblebustin. That is funny. You take your humor where you can find it, and some of the best can be in the comments! It was a nice break from painting… 🙂
U.S. Treasury says No Further Delay in FATCA Effective Date
If Fatca is implemented, the real winner is China as all business person will run away from USA’s IRS.