Monday 30 April 2012

Ireland in on FATCA? No.

This story is making the rounds, but I found it at "lowtax.net": Ireland is in talks with the US over that multilateral FATCA deal, but not really.
"It is thought that Ireland wants any agreed approach to FATCA to be based on domestic tax reporting legislation and an automatic exchange of information under existing bilateral tax treaties. 
As the IFIA has pointed out, Ireland is negotiating the possible adoption of a model global agreement, which would not alter or amend the obligation to identify or report certain information under FATCA, but would outline an alternative pathway for reporting FATCA information. 
..."The fact inter-governmental arrangements are likely to be based on a model agreement means that any framework under which bilateral exchange of information agreements operate should be done on a consistent basis, rather than under individual agreements which might be operated on a disjointed basis.”
I am beginning to believe Steve Dean when he tells me that getting in on the FATCA deal is not at all about about exchanging more information.

Let's just be clear.  FATCA is weird and annoying (and even offensive to some) because it is government-to-taxpayer regulation, in which the US is exerting the jurisdiction to regulate the practices of foreign banks.  Tax treaty info exchange is government-to-government agreement in which the governments agree to collect information on their own, and then share some of it with each other under pre-arranged deals.  Automatic info exchange is a deal in which they turn over info regularly; info by request only if you ask nicely and with sufficient detail.  Rand Paul apparently thinks that is also offensive, enough to deny the executive branch the Senate's advice and consent, but I think and hope he's an outlier.

When you see the story start out talking about FATCA and end up talking about tax treaties, you are witnessing the struggle over who gets to regulate who in our global economy.

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