Industry Comment

FATCA draft regulations have arrived

Thursday, February 09, 2012

The long overdue US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act ("FATCA") draft regulations have now been issued. Under this proposed FATCA regulations, IRS has introduced a "new government-to-government framework for implementing FATCA." The governments of France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom will work together to create a means to collect the information from their banks and send it to the United States. In the press release they issued on 08 February 2011 Treasury said that once these five "FATCA partner" countries finalised the framework, banks in those countries would not have to enter into separate data disclosure agreements with the United States' IRS tax collection agency.
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FATCA - will FATCA be more user friendly?

Wednesday, February 08, 2012

Speaking at the 24th Annual Institute on Current Issues in International Taxation, Washington, DC, on 15 December, Doug Shulman, IRS Commissioner, announced a delay to the publication of draft FATCA regulation to 2012.

He explained the reasons for this delay stating that they have directly engaged with the executives from banks and financial institutions around the globe and have listened to the major concerns which generally fall into two categories.

The conflict between FATCA and other countries’ laws.
The difficulties in implementing and administering the withholding requirements for passthru payments and the potential burden they place on foreign financial institutions (FFIs).

He emphasised that IRS have considered all the conversations very seriously and the new proposed regulations have taken into account these implementation concerns. He expects that the new regulations will provide a way forward to address these major issues in reality.

Click here to read the statement in full. Read more...

Information Reporting Program Advisory Committee (IRPAC) view on FATCA

Tuesday, November 01, 2011

Information Reporting Program Advisory Committee (IRPAC) has issued a report, as part of its annual report, addressing the current FATCA provisions.

The main areas covered in this report with regard to FATCA are:

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Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA)

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) is a US tax law which was enacted on 18 March 2010 as a part of Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment (HIRE) Act. Read more...