Industry Comment

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.