Bank
Under pressure from European banks in particular, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service has issued clarification with respect to a FATCA requirement that “foreign financial institutions” be obliged to provide the so-called Tax Information Numbers of their American clients from January, 2020 onward, which tax experts say means that banks now won’t have to close the accounts of their TIN-lacking “accidental American” clients at the end of this year.

The new guidance is contained in a new question added 10 days ago to the IRS’s FATCA FAQs page, according to John Richardson, a Toronto-based lawyer who is active in American expat matters.

It confirms comments issued in September by Dutch finance minister Menno Snel, who, as reported, said he based his statements on information he’d received “in recent weeks” from his “American counterparts about their enforcement of FATCA”.

The IRS has not yet issued a statement formally announcing the new guidance with respect to FATCA and the TIN requirement, but tax experts spotted it and have been sharing the news of it on social media, Richardson and other tax experts said today.

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The Australian Tax Office (ATO) recently released a guide on their approach to information gathering. The quite comprehensive 53 page guide provides an insight to both the principles adopted by the ATO in exercising their powers and the considerable extent of those powers.

Australia’s Income Tax Assessment Act 1936 (ITAA 36) confers many of the relevant information gathering powers. These powers include both the power to give formal notices requiring information to be provided and formal access powers.

For example, §263 of ITAA 36 allows an authorized ATO officer to “…at all times have full and free access to all buildings, places, books, documents and other papers” and to Read More