Campaigners lobbying for the repeal of FATCA in the USA are demanding to know why President Donald Trump and Republicans in Washington are ignoring their call to axe the controversial tax law.
Around 24 separate lobby groups have come together under the Repeal FATCA banner.
They want to abolish FATCA and have spoken with Republicans in Washington DC to support them.
But despite the Republicans listing the repeal of FATCA as one of their presidential election policies, no mention has been made of FATCA since President Trump has entered office.
Washington silence
Since January, when he moved into the White House, the Trump administration has made several announcements about tax changes, but said nothing about FATCA.
At the forefront of the campaign is Nigel Green, CEO and founder of world leading expat financial advice firm deVere Group.
“President Trump should now make good on his promise that he will be ‘president for all Americans’ including ‘the forgotten men and women of our country who will be forgotten no longer’ by abandoning this achingly un-American policy once and for all,” he writes online at Newsmax Finance.
“Americans live under one of the worst tax systems in the entire world. It’s now time that the President should recognize the embarrassment of this draconian regime and join the rest of the civilised world, which has long acknowledged that residence and/or territoriality are the only criteria upon which a fair income tax system should be founded.
Tax shackles
“The American tax policy is not the global norm. And there’s a reason for this: it is fundamentally unjust to tax a people for their national identity alone.”
FATCA demands foreign financial institutions report the financial details of accounts held by US taxpayers to the IRS each year.
More than 100 countries and tens of thousands of financial insitutions hand information to the IRS under the law.
“It is beyond the time that America releases her citizens from the rusty tax shackles and implements a new, modern fairer tax system so that all US citizens can enjoy the same freedoms and prosperity as everyone else in the world,” wrote Green.
