Wednesday, October 8, 2014

NTA Nina Olson Speaks on the Rough Edges of FATCA (10/8/14)

Nina Olson, the National Taxpayer Advocate, feels taxpayer's pain with respect to the rough edges of FATCA.  William Hoffman, FATCA 'Tormenting' Taxpayers, Olson Says, 2014 TNT 195-3 (10/8/14).  Olson was speaking at the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association FATCA Policy Symposium in Washington yesterday.  Here are some excepts from the article:
"This is a piece of legislation that is so big and so far-reaching, and [has] so many different moving pieces, and is rolling out in an incremental fashion . . . that you really won't be able to know what its consequences are, intended or otherwise," Olson said. "I don't think we'll know that for years. And by that point we'll actually be a little too late to go, 'Oops, my bad, we shouldn't have done this,' and then try to unwind it." 
* * * * 
"I keep asking in all of these questions -- are we burdening the compliant taxpayer?" Olson said. "And the people that we're really trying to uncover are not participating in this process, and so they're not feeling any burden whatsoever, because they're not paying the extra cost." 
* * * * 
There is good news for some, Olson said. After foreign banks expressed reluctance to open accounts for some U.S. taxpayers overseas, some enterprising businesses began offering insurance to protect against incomplete FATCA disclosures, she said.
"So here we now have created a whole new industry for a risk we have manufactured ourselves," Olson said.
I do not have permission to provide the article, but will try to locate non copyrighted reports of her talk and, if I find any, I will post the link.

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