FATCA: US Treasury updates proposals to ease burden

The US Treasury today issued updated proposals designed to fight offshore tax evasion.

It said some foreign countries could comply with the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) regulations by collecting required financial data and forwarding it to US authorities. Under its original proposals, financial institutions, not their governments, were tasked with collecting and reporting the data. Allowing for governments, rather than financial institutions, to report the information takes advantage of long-standing procedures and relationships between financial institutions and their home countries, lowering the compliance burden, the US Treasury said. Julie Patterson...