deVere CEO demands ‘firm action’ from Sec. Mnuchin on fatally-flawed FATCA

The CEO of one of the world’s largest independent financial services organisations has co-written an assertive open letter to the U.S. Treasury Secretary to demand the Trump administration scraps the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act.

Nigel Green, together with Jim Jatras, his co-leader of the Campaign to Repeal FATCA, have sent the five-page letter to the Honorable Steve Mnuchin as, after a year in office, nothing has been done to abandon the “worst law most Americans have never heard of.” This despite promises in the election campaign that, should they win, the Republicans would “call for repeal” of FATCA.

Enacted in 2010 by a Democrat-controlled Congress and signed into law by Barack Obama, FATCA is virtually unknown to most Americans but has been wreaking havoc with the global financial system outside the U.S. Touted as a weapon against "fat cat" tax evaders stashing funds offshore, FATCA is instead an indiscriminate information dragnet requiring all non-U.S. financial institutions (banks, credit unions, insurance companies, investment and pension funds, etc.) in every country in the world to report data on all specified U.S. accounts to the IRS. If any country refuses to comply, FATCA provides for its financial sector to be hit with crippling penalties that will tank its economy.

The letter, dated November 14, states: “We are writing to you on the supposition that in a democratic country, elections should have consequences. When a political party stands before the electorate on declared principles and makes specific promises, those principles and promises should be reflected in how that party governs under its mandate from the voters.” 

They are referring to the 2016 Republican Platform that read: “The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and the Foreign Bank and Asset Reporting Requirements result in government’s warrantless seizure of personal financial information without reasonable suspicion or probable cause. Americans overseas should enjoy the same rights as Americans residing in the United States, whose private financial information is not subject to disclosure to the government except as to interest earned. The requirement for all banks around the world to provide detailed information to the IRS about American account holders outside the United States has resulted in banks refusing service to them. Thus, FATCA not only allows ‘unreasonable search and seizures’ but also threatens the ability of overseas Americans to lead normal lives. We call for its repeal and for a change to residency-based taxation for U.S. citizens overseas.”

In the letter, Mr Green and Mr Jatras comment: “This Republican pledge to repeal FATCA rests on the deepest and most cherished American principles, not least a decent respect for the privacy of citizens who are not engaged in lawbreaking and are not even suspected of doing so. Even the IRS’s own Taxpayer Advocate Service has criticized FATCA’s 'enforcement-oriented regime with respect to international taxpayers' with its 'operative assumption [that] appears to be that all such taxpayers should be suspected of fraudulent activity, unless proven otherwise'.” 

They add: “We are confident that legislative progress is being made and that FATCA will be repealed in the near future. We are writing to you now because of our disappointment that no positive action has yet been taken by the other part of the apparatus of government, in the Executive Branch. This includes the Department of the Treasury.”

Nigel Green and Jim Jatras launched the Campaign to Repeal FATCA, a Washington DC-based lobbying group, in February.

At the launch, Mr Green noted: "FATCA is an extraterritorial diktat that burdens other countries' financial institutions and their clients, which violates other countries' sovereignty, and which is detrimental to their consumers and taxpayers.

“It turns law-abiding, middle-class Americans living overseas, of whom there are approximately eight million, into financial pariahs.”

The letter to Secretary Mnuchin, in which it is requested that he personally takes “firm action”, concludes with a sharp assertion: “It’s well past time that the choice American voters made last year became a reality with respect to this critical issue.”

In summary, Jim Jatras affirms: “To put it bluntly, after the passage of a full year since Election Day 2016, by all indications the Obama Administration remains firmly in power as far as FATCA is concerned.”