What an OECD "public briefing" teaches about the rule of law.

The ACA representative who attended the OECD public briefing on FATCA posted a comprehensive description here. The substance of the briefing is important of course and it is well explained in the post, but I note that we can also learn a little more about the OECD and about international tax lawmaking from this participation, and these are things worth noticing for anyone interested in how the rule of law develops in taxation.

• There were no other members of civil society present (non-government, non-business), and there were empty seats, even though Victoria was initially denied entry because space had to be reserved for business interests. So the OECD is still an epistemic community talking with itself. That is important in terms of framing public discourse about what matters and what doesn't for taxation, as well as what questions ought to be answered and what the answers ought to be.
• The issues are all cast as technical compliance ones, as if the politics and policies are all resolved. They are not, but casting things as merely technical in nature makes it easier to turn aspiration into law; it's a common modus operandi for tax regimes, and the OECD has used it consistently over its lifespan.
• Treaty competent authorities will be working out the technical details on how automatic information sharing is going to take place, including registering FFIs and sending info through the IRS portal.  So more and more international tax will get worked out through these obscure, opaque, non-law making diplomatic channels, and there will be less and less law to work with as a result.

These are notable phenomena in the context of simultaneous calls for transparency and accountability in governance, including from the OECD itself.