http://www.scmp.com/business/article/1519835/beijing-urged-comply-foreign-account-tax-compliance-act
Hong Kong financial institutions with mainland affiliates are hoping Beijing signs an agreement with Washington soon on a new US tax disclosure law, because of concerns mainland financial institutions will otherwise find it difficult, if not impossible, to comply with the new law.
We have observed that in China, financial institutions are waiting for more information on an IGA (intergovernmental agreement) before registering [to comply with Fatca],” said Florence Carr, Asia-Pacific Fatca lead at accounting firm EY.
HSBC spokesman Gareth Hewett said it had decided that the whole group should be “Fatca-compliant”.
“Achieving compliance with Fatca by July 1 is a requirement,” he said. “Achieving this is in line with our ambition to be the world’s leading international bank.”
HSBC which admitted to being the world’s largest laundry in the world ( 6 billion of mexican drug money) and none of its banksters ever went to jail, now decides it wants to be compliant. How nice.
Hong Kong and mainland China are two different beasts. This FATCA deal will never fly in Mainland China. They even banned Windows 8 from government computers. . no way they will allow such information intrusions.
Can only hope that the PRC pushes back along with Russia.
The banks are also struggling to survive. They will fight for that HARD.
Well not exactly BS, just utterly one-sided reporting. Three reasons:
1. The author is Toh Han Shih, the Singaporean version of Patrick Temple-West.
2. Local voices of opposition are scarce; the poor fools who went and got US passports of their own volition back in the 80s are blaming only themselves rather than the government, and the few of us who applied for naturalisation here don’t want to speak up. (One prominent anti-finance-industry activist, a Pakistani, had his naturalisation application rejected a couple of years ago. Maybe it had absolutely nothing to do with politics and was just because of unpaid parking tickets or whatever, but of course no one really wants to take the chance.)
3. The local establishment can easily ignore foreign voices of opposition. Our anti-discrimination laws are far weaker than Canada, so something along the lines of the Charter Challenge is a non-starter here. And also we have Basic Law Article 109, “The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall bust through the roof whenever banks say ‘jump!’ provide an appropriate economic and legal environment for the maintenance of the status of Hong Kong as an international financial centre.” The only real way to convince our government not to proceed with FATCA would be if the rest of the world financial system said no first.
Here it comes……are you on the NSA list of the spied upon?
This is going to be great and really put America in the trash can
Greenwald’s Finale: Naming Victims of Surveillance
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/05/26/greenwalds_finale_naming_victims_of_surveillance_122747.html
I can hardly wait for these 2 million names to be published
All the PRC has to do is stop buying US Treasury bonds that’s their FATCA carve out. He who holds the debt controls the situation.
The USG could struggle to get the PRC to comply.
@Don,
There is something like a $20-$30b deficit with China from the US. This means they have this number of new dollars each month. They can’t sit on the cash and be inflated away. So they have to buy treasuries. Looks like overall the US runs a deficit of $40b / month. So there has to be that amount of dollars held abroad each month.
Holding dollars is about to get more expensive for some. The dollar value has to go down unless the dollars can go to people who can avoid the 30% withholding.
China and Saudi Arabia accepted FATCA.
http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/tax-policy/treaties/Pages/FATCA-Archive.aspx