The latest FATCA news from Taiwan and mainland China: Taiwan banks are busy worrying about the mainland’s attitude, but Beijing is still not releasing any details besides confirming the fact that FATCA discussions with Washington are underway. On the bright side, the lack of confirmation about the mainland’s final disposition towards FATCA seems to be spooking banks in Taiwan. They certainly seem less confident in their original “bright idea” of solving all their problems by shredding Taiwan’s consumer data privacy laws in order to reduce their costs of complying with FATCA — because they realised they might also face issues in other major markets where they have far less lobbying power to encourage similar “solutions”. Translations below.
Tag Archives: FATCA
ACA has just issued the April 2012 News Update.
For those of you who are not members of ACA, and not on their email list, I wanted to alert you to the April edition of the ACA News Update for some interesting new information. The top item on the list is this:
ACA Participates in Meeting with Departments of IRS, Treasury,Financial Crimes Enforcement Agency (FINCen) and the Office for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes (TFFC) Continue reading
US taxman's long Arm Threatens Costly Kiwi Headaches
This isn’t much, but it is the first popular media story on FATCA that I have seen in NZ. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be any opportunity for Kiwis to provide comment feedback. I have sent an email to the Editor to see if contact with the journalist is possible, and see if additional news reporting is in the offing. They have barely cracked a window open on the story, but as I found out when I did a search for FATCA on the Seattle Times today, there was nothing there either! So maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on my Kiwi friends. They now know more than Seattlites do! Thanks to Moby for drawing my attention to it.
Dutch Finance Secretary sidesteps hostile questions from lawmakers on FATCA
Mondaq.com is running the headline “The Netherlands to join Joint FATCA Statement”. This appears to be lifted from an English-language newsletter issued last week by Amsterdam-based law firm De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek. Don’t get the wrong impression, though — no agreement has yet been negotiated. The most recent news is that Finance Secretary Frans Weekers stated last week (link available in Dutch only) that the Netherlands is open in principle to joining FATCA. But the cross-border services providers have managed to miss (or to bury) the real news. Last week some Second Chamber members submitted written questions to Weekers (also in Dutch only; see here for Google Translate’s rendering). I’ve manually translated some of the interesting bits. I am disappointed by many of Weekers’ responses, both for their attitude towards the democratic process and their apparent lack of understanding about FATCA’s effects on bona fide residents of his country who have no financial connection to the U.S. besides their passports.
Carl Levin, Roger Conklin, FATCA, hitchhikers, and the Trojan Horse
Cross posted from RenounceUScitizenship – updated from October 2011.
Hitching A Ride – Is A “Trojan Horse” Provision Legitimate?
https://twitter.com/#!/renounceus/status/196371219136790529
Two small English-speaking countries with very different reactions to FATCA
In non-Anglophone countries, a lot of the coverage of FATCA is driven by cross-border tax consulting firms — the only organisations with the resources to translate huge volumes of FATCA news into the local language, and the connections to push their version of the story to local journalists on a regular basis. These companies, despite their crocodile tears, are very happy about all the new business that FATCA is going to generate for them in helping customers navigate complex new requirements, and get no benefit by promoting opposition to it.
In Anglophone countries, however, the local journalists have no excuse for not getting their FATCA coverage right anymore; there is a huge amount of material out there about the potential negative effects of the U.S.’ new fiscal imperialism. So it’s interesting to see the sharply differing coverage of FATCA in Ireland — a country with a high presence of cross-border tax sandwich-makers — and Jamaica, where such companies are far less active.
South Korean finance minister sells his country's sovereignty to the IRS, surrenders to FATCA
South Korean tax industry publication Josei Ilbo is reporting that Finance Minister Bahk Jae-wan met with Timothy Geithner at the G20/IMF/World Bank meeting this weekend and came to an agreement on the implementation of FATCA in South Korea. Their journalist has written a shoddy and clueless article which makes no mention of the potential effects on Korean Americans, returned South Korean expatriates still holding on to their green cards, Americans working in South Korea, South Korean privacy laws, or anything else — just the usual cross-border services firm propaganda on “minimising the burdens of financial institutions”. Translation after the jump.
“Peaceful resistance” to FATCA will result in an alternative financial system
Cross posted from RenounceUScitizenship
https://twitter.com/#!/renounceus/status/193337841584046080
Ever since the FATCA discussion started, I have always wondered:
Why would the rest of the world comply with FATCA? I read about compliance costs. I read about trying to cut deals with the IRS. What I don’t understand is why countries don’t take a much longer term view of this. Remember:
People always overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.
Continue reading
DATCA is not Dead! It lives on…
From Accounting Today, Michael Cohn reports that the IRS Issues FATCA Guidance on Reporting Interest Paid to non resident Aliens
The Internal Revenue Service has issued final regulations and guidance on reporting interest paid to nonresident aliens, along with a revenue procedure listing the countries with which the U.S. has a bilateral exchange of information agreement. Continue reading
Accounting Today, Two new posts on FATCA
Just a quick note to draw your attention to Michael Cohn, of Accounting Today who has been polific in writing about FATCA and offshore tax issues.
He is in the league with Robert Wood at Forbes in providing consistently good articles on the issues at hand. Here are the two links to the two new stories today…
Taxpayers Strained by New FATCA Requirements
NYC CPAs want IRS to clarify FATCA Reporting
I always try to comment if I have the time when I see his stories for the reasons I have explained elsewhere…