Foreign financial institutions (FFIs) and US withholding agents (USWAs) have presented compliance concerns to Treasury and the IRS about the status of FFIs in jurisdictions that are known to be in an advanced stage of concluding an IGA, but have not yet signed such agreement. Treasury has signed IGAs with 26 jurisdictions and has reached agreements in substance or is in advanced discussions with many others.
Treasury and the IRS have on April 2, 2014 issued Announcement 2014-17 to provide some level of comfort to FFIs in such jurisdictions that already have reached an IGA in substance and to USWAs paying agents.
Moreover, the IRS has also granted an extension of 10 (ten) days, previously April 25 but now May 5, 2014 (GMT -5), for an FFI to register via the FATCA Registration Portal to be included on the PFFI Global Intermediary Identification Number (GIIN) list to be issued June 2, 2014.
On July 1, 2014 FATCA withholding must be implemented for certain transactions (see Chapter 12 FATCA Withholding Compliance, LexisNexis® Guide to FATCA Compliance). FATCA requires that a withholding agent must obtain an FFI’s GIIN for payments made from July 1, 2014 and must confirm that the GIIN appears on the IRS FFI List. However, an exception provides that a withholding agent does not need to obtain a reporting Model 1 FFI’s GIIN for payments made before January 1, 2015.
The IRS disclosed that “some FFIs that expect to be reporting Model 2 FFIs may not be able to register by April 25 if legal impediments would prevent them from agreeing to the terms of the FFI Agreement that would apply absent the modifications applicable to reporting Model 2 FFIs under a signed Model 2 IGA.”
“Some FFIs”, continued the IRS Notice, “…expect to be reporting Model 1 FFIs … are concerned about missing the April 25 deadline in case the relevant IGA is not in fact signed, and therefore treated as being in effect, by July 1.”
Relevant portions of Announcement 2014-17 are excerpted below.
Expansion of IGAs Treated as Being in Effect to Include Agreements in Substance
This announcement aims to address these concerns by providing that the jurisdictions listed on the Treasury and IRS websites as jurisdictions that are treated as having an IGA in effect will also include jurisdictions that, before July 1, 2014, have reached agreements in substance with the United States on the terms of an IGA and have consented to be included on the Treasury and IRS list, even if those agreements have not yet been signed.
Such jurisdictions will be treated as having an IGA in effect from the date that the jurisdiction provides its consent (or April 2, 2014, the date of the public release of this announcement, if later) until December 31, 2014, the date by which the IGA must be signed in order for this status to continue without interruption. Treasury expects to add jurisdictions to this list in the coming weeks as additional jurisdictions consent to inclusion on the list and additional agreements in substance are reached. Jurisdictions that reach agreements in substance on or after July 1, 2014, will not be included in the list of jurisdictions that are treated as having an IGA in effect until the IGA is signed.
The text of the agreements in substance that are treated as being in effect will not be published by the IRS or Treasury until the IGA is signed. Instead, the list will specify only whether the relevant IGA is a Model 1 or a Model 2 IGA. Until the IGA is signed, the jurisdiction will be treated as having in effect the relevant model provisions. This means that an FFI resident in, or organized under the laws of, a jurisdiction that is listed on the Treasury and IRS websites as having reached an agreement in substance will be permitted to register on the FATCA registration website consistent with its treatment under the relevant model IGA and will be permitted to certify its status to a withholding agent consistent with that treatment.
New Dates for Registering to Ensure GIIN Inclusion on the IRS FFI List
Finally, Treasury and the IRS remind all withholding agents that, in accordance with Reg. §1.1471-3(e)(3), a withholding agent that receives a Form W-8 from a payee with a GIIN that does not yet appear on the published IRS FFI List has 90 days to verify that the GIIN appears on the list before the withholding agent will be treated as having reason to know that the chapter 4 status of the payee is unreliable or incorrect. In addition, a withholding agent that receives a Form W-8 from a payee indicating that the payee has applied for a GIIN has 90 days to obtain the GIIN from the payee and verify it against the IRS FFI List before the withholding agent will be treated as having reason to know that the chapter 4 status of the payee is unreliable or incorrect.
In accordance with Circular 230 Disclosure
2 comments on “20 Jurisdictions Treated as Having an IGA in Effect and 10 Day Extension for FFI Registration Granted”
What a charade. As a Norwegian FATCA follower says…
More and better unlaw.
First the FATCA unlaw—unconstitutional, extraterritorial, ridiculous.
Next, the IGA unlaws. No congressional authority, not treaties.
Now, not enough countries are signing the untreaties, so now we have an unintergovernmental agreement. Countries haven’t signed, won’t sign, maybe will sign, are talking about signing, means Treasury releases the appropriate media propaganda about FATCA compliance. So having once burped a sound that sounded like “FATCA” in a bar in your Treasury negotiations, or have pissed “FATCA” in the snow out back, you are now being treated as if the government has signed an IGA.
An unintergovernmental agreement. Almost an agreement, but not quite. An unagreement with the United States, where these countries have almost promised to give data to the USA, in exchange for the USA “promising” to try to send data. This way the banks in the countries don’t have to do what the United States Congress had demanded them to do in their own countries. Instead, they can do what the US demanded them to do, except to send it to their government who hasn’t yet passed a law to break their own constitutions in order to do what the USA has demanded them to do under 30% economic sanctions.
Every day, I understand more and more about how the FATCAnatics think. All it takes is a bunch of unlogic strapped together in a way that the media can pass of as a good thing..
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