TaxConnections Member Professor William Byrnes examines whether it is prudent for taxpayers to trust the governments of the 117 countries that scored a fifty or below on Transparency International’s corruption index. The complete information system invoked by the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) encourages, even prolongs, the bad behavior of black hat governments by providing fuel (financial information) to feed the fire of corruption and suppression of rivals. Professor Byrnes recommends that the United States leverage a “carrot-stick” policy tool to incentivize bad actors to adopt best tax administration practices.

Article download at https://ssrn.com/abstract=2916444