Reposted from the Renounce US Citizenship blog
This post was written in December 2014. It is being reposted in 2018 – the question is why
FATCA and the CRS (“Common Reporting Standard”) are mandatory information sharing schemes. They first define people in terms of their “tax residency” (each country defines who its tax residents are) and then shares people’s private information based on that “tax residency”. In other words (assuming you believe that there is a legitimate interest in privacy) both FATCA and the CRS should be viewed as “privacy overrides”.
Although the notion of privacy is dead in the United States (companies like Facebook and Google make a living off obtaining and using private information), the European GDPR suggests that privacy is valued by Europeans and that individuals should have some control over their data. In Europe the GDPR reflects a presumption that individual belongs to the individual. There is no such presumption in the United States. See:
31-year-old Austrian lawyer Max Schrems was the catalyst for new privacy protection regulations in Europe. He says your data belongs to you and you should have control over it. pic.twitter.com/OTV0reXDOg
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) November 12, 2018
Automatic exchange of tax information and data privacy
