Few American laws have been as controversial as FATCA. FATCA stands for Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, a law passed in 2010 to clamp down on the use of foreign bank accounts by U.S. taxpayers to hide money that is otherwise subject to taxation in the United States. FATCA is the U.S. government’s newest enforcement tool in the fight against international tax evasion.

Those that denounce the law criticize its complexity, its expansive reach, and the high cost of compliance. Those that like it (and there are some) argue that it will blow the lid off of “the old way of exchanging tax information between countries on request,” which they view as too lenient on tax cheats. FATCA, they predict, will revolutionize the exchange of information, by making it “automatic,” thereby removing any safe harbors for those Read More