As long time IBS readers have known, we have been saying that a global GATCA was the ultimate goal of the FATCA mis-adventure. It was the dream of the ideologues in Treasury and the IRS who who have been responsible for the implementation of FATCA.
The most recent posting about GATCA on Isaac Brock in this article by Alex Newman
From FATCA to GATCA – Alex Newman hits another home run
Update 2/17: Alex has a new article out…
Globalists Unveil Socialist-backed New World Tax Regime
Maybe Obama, when he launched his offshore jihad didn’t understand what he was doing. (video here) Maybe Congressman in their FATCA PR announcements back in 2009, were just witless vassal’s and didn’t know it. Certainly few Congressman knew they passed it hidden in stealth in the Hire Act, but this is what we now are getting. A gotcha GATCA!
If you search for GATCA terms in archives you will find other earlier pieces last year like here, and the references go back farther in the comments. We were watching for the blow back onto domestic shores in the form of the reciprocity DATCA, the history of which is documented here., but it is beginning to look like that GATCA will get here first. Will America’s Congress accept it? Time will tell, as they say.
Today, after a lot of anticipation, we now have the official birth announcement, on the web site of the OECD , Jesse Eggert’s new employer.
Standard for Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information
Get used to the new acronym that is common in the OECD and FCC (FATCA Compliance Complex) parlance,
AEOI or Automatic Exchange of Information.
I have a feeling you will be seeing it or some variation of it more often now.
Bottom line, AEOI = GATCA and this monster was created by the Union of its FATCA Father and OECD mother.
I am moving some discussion around this subject from Alex’s thread, because I think it is important you read and consider how this GATCA will factor into the CBT (Citizenship Based Taxation) reporting requirements under FATCA, and the RBT (Residency Based Taxation) reporting under GATCA.
How does that work? Will the U.S. just meekly acquiesce and accept this new global norm, which came from Treasuries Robert Stack’s “Gold Standard”? What if they don’t?
Also, notice how this is already factoring into the FATCA IGA acceptance thinking of affected FFIs. If I were a country faced with signing one of these, I think I would be confused. Which way am I supposed to go? How do I reconcile the conflicts. Do I do both, or do I accept FATCA as supreme over GATCA? How do I reconcile the conflict claims of types of taxation?
GATCA is born:
OECD proposes data exchange norm in tax evasion crackdown:
Here is the most relevant information:
“The OECD’s top official for financial issues, Pascal Saint-Amans, said the OECD’s proposed standard is in effect a multilateral version of the US FATCA, or Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act.
One major difference, however, is that the OECD standard will be based on a residency test rather than nationality, according to OECD officials.
It will cover not only bank deposits, but interest paid and capital gains.
It will also require reporting of the ultimate beneficiary, which should hinder the use of trusts and shell companies to evade tax liabilities.
Saint-Amans acknowledged, however, that gold and other precious metals will escape the system as banks aren’t forced to open their vaults and safe deposit boxes, (YET!) and this could pose a problem.”
Noone goes onto say….. The US needs to scrap FATCA and adopt the OECD system. As long as FATCA lives, with the withholding threats, discrimination of Americans will continue, even with a global OECD GATCA.
From Osgood….
look at this comment in a FATCA submission to the NZ Select Committee hearing 2 days ago from NZ AMP…
“We submit that as it does not seem to be feasible under the wording of the draft IGA to separate “review, identify and report”, Financial Institutions must be allowed to identify and review ALL accounts. We further submit that they should be allowed – for consistency with the new global standard for automatic exchange of information – to report on ALL accounts, regardless of balance.
This is going to get ugly ……
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@just me … “this is going to get ugly.”… agree agree agree…. see caracalla “as long as we have this [pointing to his sword]… we shall not[be poor]“……………… waiting and watching for [i am] the establishment of other global reserve currency……………….
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OECD Releases Draft of Radical Country-by-Country Reporting Template
@Just Me,
re;
“..the FATCAnatic ideologues have been on a mission just ike the NeoCons of the right in past. Clear in their direction, and certain of their mission.
We have had their words to show what they intend to do, via OECD pronouncements… ”
Can anything be clearer than the words of Saint-Amans in this interview, which others here at IBS have already flagged:
‘OECD seeks inspiration from FATCA model’
Pascal Saint-Amans says Switzerland has had an almost existential attachment to banking secrecy (AFP/G20Russia)
by Mathieu van Berchem in Paris, swissinfo.ch
December 9, 2013 – 17:00
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/OECD_seeks_inspiration_from_FATCA_model.html?cid=37494258
……”swissinfo.ch: Some states worry about the complexity and the financial burden of automatic exchange of information.
P. S-A. : “…….there will be only one way of collecting and exchanging information. That will cost something, but it is the price to pay to be free from suspicion of complicity in fiscal fraud.”
There is that FATCA-esque attempt to establish a norm that we are all guilty until we prove innocence and become pliant and compliant with any and all mining of our personal and financial data. ….”…it is the price to pay to be free from suspicion of complicity in fiscal fraud” – that incredibly dangerous claim goes further than the musings of Richard Harvey FATCAfather that selling FATCA would go over easier if our ordinary legal local accounts were conflated with those of criminals – and that non-reporting and noncompliance should be conflated with money laundering, criminal tax evasion, drug and terror funding, etc.
This is the effective death of the presumption of innocence and the onus usually imposed on the State – who wields great power and resources – to have the burden of proof that a crime has been committed. The imminent death of due process and our civil and human rights.
@badger
Very well put. The presumption of innocence is becoming a very quaint little idea of those olden times, if we allow this to happen while opiated on sports and pop culture mass media…
You can’t make this stuff up, and don’t need any elaborate speculation or conspiracy theories about the intentions of these ideologues. Their own words are good enough….and, sadly it looks like the G-20 are all on board!
This is a high price to pay “to be free from suspicion of complicity in fiscal fraud” And trust me, fiscal fraud will be subject to their definition which if like what we have seen, it will make everything the state doesn’t like, or wants to know, “fiscal fraud”
@ Just Me
When TPTSNB could see their global warming tax plot was getting frozen out they had to come up with something else to send the middle class plunging into a lower (economic) class. FATCA to GATCA is the next attempt but if it fails you can be sure they have something else up their sleeves. Of course it’s more than a wealth transfer to the upper echelons. It’s about control and it’s a multi-faceted pogrom. Total Information Awareness (TIA) plays a huge role in all of this, as does the burden of debt which so many have been enticed into carrying. I know everyone knows this at some level of their being but for some reason it is excruciatingly difficult to muster sufficient numbers of people into an effective protest. Every straw looks like that surely must be the last one but somehow yet another straw gets added with barely a whimper heard.
@Em…
You are so right, the need to Control everything and everyone is not unique to this generation or time, but what is unique now, is the technological tools to do it.
These guys at Tax Justice want more Controls, not less…
Tax Justice Network responds to OECD AEoI Report
Feb 13, 2014 – Today the OECD presented a major report on a new global standard for countries and tax havens to exchange information with each other, a new tool for fighting the scourge of tax evasion. The report contains many positive elements but falls far short of what the world’s citizens desperately need – especially citizens in poorer countries. Notably:
The OECD plan is likely to result in developing countries being excluded because they are expected to provide ‘reciprocal’ information exchange, even though pretty much all active tax havens are in rich countries, and many developing countries would need to sacrifice scarce resources to set up the arrangements to collect the information to be exchanged.
The OECD standard, while technically useful, contains loopholes that can easily be, and must be, closed.
Freeports, safety deposit boxes and other kinds of storage mechanism are excluded.
There are no sanctions for recalcitrant jurisdictions.
@Just Me
If TJN have their way, Nigeria and countries like it may just be the world’s next tax havens 😉
OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría said: “….This is a real game changer. Globalisation of the world’s financial system has made it increasingly simple for people to make, hold and manage investments outside their country of residence……….” http://www.oecd.org/ctp/exchange-of-tax-information/oecd-delivers-new-single-global-standard-on-automatic-exchange-of-information.htm
Apparently, the OECD Secretary-General does not think that people should be able to:
“…….. make, hold and manage investments outside their country of residence…”.
Off with their heads if they do. They must obviously be criminals.
Is that a crime now for everyone – “..to make, hold and manage investments outside their country of residence..”?
Since when is it essentially wrong for people to move around the world, travel, study, work, and marry and migrate or retire to other countries? And do normal banking and saving wherever they find themselves? Or to live part-time in one place and part in another?
So now: under FATCA and FBARs, 3520’s, etc. US citizens and those deemed “US taxable persons” are suspect for having a legal local bank account where they ACTUALLY live – ex. in Canada (where they may be born or naturalized), – but also now, according to the OECD, the NON-US person – ex. a Canadian-only – who has a retirement or vacation home in Arizona or Florida, and lives there part of the year, and has legal local bank accounts there as well – is a criminal that needs the supervision of Canada, the US, AND the OECD?
Dual Canadians and other Canadian taxpayers with US status are FATCA fodder,
and now,
Canadian taxpayer snowbirds (ex. retiring to Florida) are now to be fodder for the OECD’s version of GATCA?
@badger
The message is clear. You can only do this, if we know EVERYTHING about it and you, so we can control the activity! Otherwise, keep your money and investments at home.
http://taxconnections.com/taxblog/upset-with-fatca-its-just-the-tip-of-the-iceberg/#comment-1131
I have a comment in Moderation…
OECD: the United States can remain a tax haven
Translated from an article in French:
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lesobservateurs.ch%2F2014%2F02%2F21%2Focde-les-etats-unis-peuvent-rester-paradis-fiscal%2F
“The United States has managed to introduce a clause allowing them to avoid the new international standards for automatic exchange of information set up by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which adheres Switzerland and made public last week.
[…] “Do not be afraid of words emphasizes Jürg Birri, head of the department of law at KPMG auditor for German-speaking Switzerland. What has been succeeded in the United States is difficult to accept. They use the specificities of their FATCA legislation to divert the new global law against tax evasion seeing the day and participate in tax evasion by non-Americans. “”
How is that acceptable to the rest of the world?
Thank you, noone.
This must be highlighted to our government representatives who have negotiated IGAs with the US. They are all being taken for fools if this is accepted!
More on GATCA
Four years after FATCA, four months before effective date… GATCA is born
OECD reporting model would govern global exchange of financial account data
GATCA in the New Zealand Herald, and Finance Minister Bill English supports it.
Pingback: The Isaac Brock Society
Good discussion of GATCA in this posting by @ALB_Magazine.
It came out at the first of the year, prior to OECD birthing of GATCA, but just brought to my attention…
Dealing with FATCA
Thanks for this, Just Me (and again your ‘GATCA’ terminology),
because they are so exceptional???
OECD GATCA (CRS): Joint Statement by Early Adopters Group
Wonder what their citizens think of this, and do they get a vote? Thought not!
On March 19, 2014, the OECD CRS Early Adopters Group issued a Joint Statement outlining their commitment to the standard and its key milestones. The go-live date for new accounts will be January 1, 2016, while accounts existing on December 31, 2015, must be remediated by December 31, 2016 (in the case of high-value individual accounts), and December 31, 2017 (all others).
Notably, the United States is not one of the Early Adopters, and there is no clear enforcement mechanism such as withholding. As we have seen, the possibility of withholding on U.S.-source income and proceeds is sufficient to motivate universal compliance with FATCA by virtually all jurisdictions and financial institutions. Thus, the challenges to global execution remain significant, and without universal compliance there will always be tax havens.
JOINT STATEMENT BY THE EARLY ADOPTERS GROUP
19 March 2014
Joint Statement by: Argentina, Belgium, Bulgaria, Colombia, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Malta, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom; the UK’s Crown Dependencies of Isle of Man, Guernsey and Jersey; and the UK’s Overseas Territories of Anguilla, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Montserrat, and the Turks & Caicos Islands.
“Tax evasion is a global problem and requires a global solution. We therefore welcome the new standard in automatic exchange of information between tax authorities developed by the OECD (the Common Reporting Standard). This will provide a step change in our ability to clamp down on tax evasion, which reduces public revenues and increases the burden on those who pay their taxes.
We committed ourselves to early adoption of the Common Reporting Standard, through joining the initiative first launched by France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK in April 2013. In doing so we recognised that only those financial centres which adopt the highest standards in tax transparency and work in close cooperation to tackle cross-border tax evasion will prosper in the future.
Now that the Common Reporting Standard is agreed, we intend to implement it among the early adopters group to an ambitious but realistic timetable:
– Pre-existing accounts would be those that are open on 31 December 2015 and new accounts would be those opened from 1 January 2016. Hence, new account opening procedures to record tax residence will need to be in place from 1 January 2016.
– The due diligence procedures for identifying high-value pre-existing individual accounts will be required to be completed by 31 December 2016, while the due diligence for low-value pre-existing individual accounts and for entity accounts will be required to be completed by 31 December 2017.
– The first exchange of information in relation to new accounts and pre-existing individual high value accounts will take place by the end of September 2017.
– Information about pre-existing individual low value accounts and entity accounts will either first be exchanged by the end of September 2017 or September 2018 depending on when financial institutions identify them as reportable accounts.
We invite other countries and jurisdictions to join us in this early adoption initiative and to create rapidly a truly global system of automatic information exchange which leaves no hiding places for tax evasion.”
Here is what KPMG is saying about GATCA now…
http://blog.kpmg.lu/oecd-fatca-the-flaw-in-the-plan/
Why would KPMG be negative about something that could be extremely profitable for them?
@Bubblebustin…
Maybe even common sense insights can overcome vision clouded by greed? I really don’t know, but sometimes things are so friggin’ obvious that even those that benefit are forced to admit that chaos could be around the corner!
Like this irony from the FATCA enforcers, the IRS…
BEPS Could Lead to ‘International Chaos’ If Not Managed Well, IRS Official Cautions
Forget FATCA – New Global Tax Network Is Coming
More on GATCA from The Economist…
The data revolution
That would be GATCA they are talking about, the Rosemary baby from the OECD and FATCAnatic unholy union!
And the irony is, that America after inseminating this monster, will NOT go along with it. 🙂
So for all the FATCA capitulating weasel countries, they gotcha with GATCA, and America will remain the last tax haven standing! Joke is on you! LOL
Another way to state GATCA…
BTW, there is a guy out of UK who is doing a GATCA podcast about the impacts of FATCA and the movement towards OECD Common Reporting Standards (CRS), or what I have called GATCA.
@MarkTwain alerted me to his first attempt… which was a little too full of acronym jargon designed for the professional elites..
With tweets back and forth I have encouraged him to define better and speak more to the common man so they don’t get bored. You know, “don’t hide that evil inside of something boring.”
He is trying to improve on it.
He is doing a pretty good job on the second attempt.
I especially noted this which I had NOT focused on before….
Specified U.S. persons have to be “cured” of U.S. indicia. As he says, it really is a pejorative. Since when is U.S. citizenship such a bad thing that you have to be ‘cured’ of it?
Which motivated me to create this tweet…
#youknowyoureanAmericanwhen U.S. Person indicia is such a bad thing that in #FATCA regs U have to be “cured” of it. http://bit.ly/1kzL0Rv
Also you might note, as I am pretty sure has been stated elsewhere on IBS, that having that having a U.S. area code puts you at indicia risk, including a “Skypein” number which many people have for the local call convenience.
Literally, as the regs are beginning to sink in, under FATCA everyone in the world is at risk of being a “U.S. Person” until they can prove they are NOT. That is the bottomline impact.
And with minimizing that risk, Just Me, comes avoiding exposing oneself to the risk. Steer clear of anything (or anyone) American!