FATCA: a fund manager's view

United States President Barack Obama signed the HIRE Act into law on 18 March this year. Many of the Act’s provisions will only have impact in the US but one section will affect collective investment schemes round the world. These are provisions which were first brought to Congress as the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act normally still referred to as FATCA which come into force on 1 January 2013.

The objective of these is to make it far harder to the point of impracticality for US taxpayers to evade tax on their investment returns through the use of undeclared investment accounts outside the US.  The result is a scheme under which financial institutions of all descriptions worldwide would report details of any accounts held with them by US persons to the IRS.

To encourage compliance a withholding tax – set at 30% on gross...