So reports a new article in The Jerusalem Post. Compared to some of his fellow journalists, Nadav Shemer (Twitter: @NadavShemer82) could easily win an Olympic gold medal in translation for this article; instead of parroting Treasury’s Orcish-language press releases about “US taxpayers” and claiming that’s just a mirror image of “Israeli taxpayers”, Shemer gets to the crux of the matter right in the subhead, in plain English:
A committee to establish how Israeli institutions can conform to the US foreign tax act will be headed; will force US citizens abroad to pay tax … FATCA, passed in 2010, requires all foreign financial institutions (FFIs) to become compliant by June 30, 2013. It will give the United States more power than ever to force American citizens and green-card holders residing abroad, including an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 in Israel, to become tax-compliant … At least one bank has confirmed to [CPA Philip L.] Stein that it will begin asking new customers about where they hold citizenship.
Of course, he misses out on the exact scope of that tax: not just an ordinary Form 1040 like everyone else in the country, but Form 1116 and 2555 at minimum, plus a six-page Form 3520 for your “foreign” retirement account, another six-page Form 8621 for your “foreign” ETFs, a seven-page Form 8865 for your “foreign” business, etc.
Incidentally, in a new blog post over at the WSJ, Laura Saunders notes that one of the names in this quarter’s freedom list was that of Israeli Supreme Court justice Daphne Barak-Erez.
