The Bahamian debate about how to respond to FATCA is well underway. An article published yesterday in The Bahamas Tribune discusses some of the objections to the idea of an inter-governmental agreement. Former Attorney-General John Delaney points out that the implementation of such an agreement would fall to the already-overworked Ministry of Finance, requiring it to design and set up a completely new system for information collection. In contrast, Annie Chinafat of KPMG (who is also a member of the Bahamas Financial Services Board) is more optimistic, describing the IGA as “a starting point”.
But there’s one humourous aspect of this situation which the article doesn’t mention: Minister of Finance Ryan Pinder used to be a U.S. citizen. Continue reading
