IMA welcomes government stance on tax compliance

The Investment Management Association (IMA) has welcomed a joint statement from the world's leading government's concerning plans for an allied front on international tax compliance.

The UK, US, France, Germany, Italy and Spain today issued a joint statement regarding their intergovernmental approach to improving compliance and also implementing the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FACTA).

FACTA is a US policy that will see European financial institutions working with the US government to crackdown on offshore tax evasion.

The intergovernmental approach will see these European nations creating "a government-to-government framework for implementing FATCA" and would likely see governments collecting financial data on Americans' offshore accounts rather than financial institutions.

Explaining the benefits of this approach, Julie Patterson, director of authorised funds and tax at the IMA, said: "In practice, this would mean that UK firms and funds would not have to sign up to an agreement with the IRS, reducing many of the industry's legal concerns with the original proposals.

"We welcome today's joint statement by the governments of six major countries, which commits them to exploring a common approach to FATCA implementation."

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