By J.P Finet Sept 24, 2015 Posted on Taxnotes.com
Australia announced September 23 that it has shared bank information with the IRS for the first time in compliance with the intergovernmental agreement it signed to implement the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA).
According to a release issued by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), the details of more than 30,000 financial accounts valued at more than $5 billion were provided to the United States.
“The information provided on U.S. citizens and tax residents with Australian bank accounts is the first step in a wave of transparency measures being implemented globally by Governments and tax administrations,” the ATO release said. “Beginning in 2017, close to 100 countries will be sharing non-resident data under the OECD Common Reporting Standard (CRS).”
The release said the automatic exchange of financial account information was “the new international standard to eliminate tax evasion.” The ATO added that it is committed to ensuring that taxpayers are disclosing their offshore income and that in 2017 it will implement the CRS, under which it will exchange financial account information with almost 100 countries.
Canada’s government had previously stated that it would share its bank information on September 23 in compliance with the Canada-U.S. IGA , but it was not clear that it had done so. Requests for information from the Canada Revenue Agency were not returned by press time.
Canada made no official announcement of its exchange, but a docket entry in a Canadian federal lawsuit that sought to block the transmission of financial data on reportable accounts to the United States said Canada would begin transmitting data September 23. The lawsuit, Hillis and Deegan v. the Attorney General of Canada [2015 FC 1082 ], was dismissed September 16. (Prior coverage .)
