The World Wide Tax Web: FATCA Data Sharing Goes Online

The IRS has unveiled a secure web application, the International Data Exchange Service (IDES), for cross-border data sharing. IDES will allow Foreign Financial Institutions (FFIs) and tax authorities from other countries to transmit financial data on U.S. taxpayers’ accounts, via an encrypted pathway, to the IRS.

The tool is part of the IRS’s effort to track U.S. taxpayer income globally. It is intended to assist FFIs and foreign tax authorities in their compliance with the U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). The act requires that financial institutions send to the IRS financial information of American account holders or face a hefty 30 percent withholding penalty on all transfers that pass through the U.S. With such steep fines, FFIs and their respective countries across the globe have agreed to comply with FATCA and submit account holder information, regardless of conflicts with their local laws. According to the IRS website, some 112 countries have signed intergovernmental agreements with the U.S., or otherwise reached agreements to comply, and more than 145,000 financial institutions have registered through the FATCA registration system.

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen called the portal “the start of a secure system of automated, standardized information exchanges.” According to the IRS, IDES will allow senders to encrypt data and it will also encrypt the data pathway.  IDES reportedly works through most major web browsers.

It may sound efficient and it may even be secure; but IDES also serves as a reminder of the contradiction between FATCA and data privacy laws of many of the FATCA signatory countries. The conflict is part of why FATCA has earned the billing by many as an extra-ordinary extra-territorial law and an example of American overreach.

Countries like the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Germany have data protection laws that restrict disclosure or transfer of individual’s personal information. To accommodate their own laws, these countries have entered agreements with the U.S. whereby FFIs report to their national tax authorities and the tax authorities then share data with the IRS. (The agreements highlight the questionable value to countries of their data protection laws—at least insofar of U.S. account holders are concerned—as they willingly sidestep their policies to avoid U.S. withholding penalties.)

Meanwhile, as FATCA-compliant countries prepare to push data overseas to the U.S., the E.U. is publishing factsheets directed to its citizens indicating that data protection standards will not be part of agreements to improve trade relations with the U.S. The E.U. is also working on more stringent data protection rules for member countries to strengthen online privacy rights. Are the E.U. member countries speaking out of both sides of their mouths? Or are they trying an impossible juggling act? Between the implementation of FATCA reporting and the growing concern of data privacy among FATCA signatory countries, these countries are bound either for intractable conflict or the continued subrogation of the rights of those citizens also designated U.S. taxpayers (an unfortunate result for dual citizens with minimal U.S. ties).

Regardless of ultimate upshot of this conflict, U.S. taxpayers—including those living abroad—should take heed that FATCA reporting is underway. You should consider how to disclose any unreported global income before your bank does it for you.