FATCA Tracker – November 01, 2014

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has added another 12,760 foreign financial institutions to the latest Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) list. The FATCA list is the US government’s definitive database of overseas financial institutions complying with the reporting tax information laws that started in July 2014. The current list, published on November 1, shows 116,104 financial institutions have signed up to FATCA across 218 international financial jurisdictions. The previous list, published a month earlier included 104,344 financial institutions. The financial jurisdictions with the most FATCA registrations are the Cayman Islands (21,633) and Britain (14,280). Third place is taken by Luxembourg with 5,162 registrations. How the FATCA list works Breaking the registrations down, 23 financial jurisdictions have more than 1,000 financial institutions registered. Of the rest, 52 have 10 or less registrations, while 10 of them have a single registration. Financial institutions on the database will file annual reports of accounts and investments held by clients who are US taxpayers to the IRS each year. The reporting triggers are balances of $50,000 for US residents and $200,000 for American expats. The next FATCA list is due on December 1, 2014. The list can be downloaded or searched by country or financial institution on the IRS web site. Financial institutions that do not register on the FATCA database could face financial penalties if they fail to report financial information about their US clients to the IRS. –