Treasury Offers Little Wiggle Room on Foreign Bank Reporting (1)

The Treasury Department doesn’t have any near-term plans to relax foreign banks’ obligation to report information about U.S. account holders, despite European Union leaders’ concern about hardships that result for some Americans.

The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act was enacted to help the U.S. government enforce laws requiring U.S. citizens to disclose and pay taxes on foreign assets. The requirement for overseas banks to report U.S. taxpayer identification numbers, or TINs, such as Social Security numbers, for all of their American clients is an essential component of FATCA, Lafayette G. “Chip” Harter said in a mid-March letter to the EU ...