Music now, FATCA, when it came out in 2010, was a revolutionary piece of legislation. It completely changed not only US tax compliance but also the entire landscape of International Tax Compliance. The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA, would have countries developing a common reporting standard, the CRS, to which the US did not join for very interesting reasons. That could be a topic of a CLE in itself. However, FATCA affects pretty much everyone who is doing business internationally. Why is that? Well, there are three parts of FATCA that I would like to discuss today. There are some different provisions of FATCA that do not quite fall within those three parts, but they are not important for today's discussion. Now, let's focus on the important ones. The first part of FATCA is the requirement by foreign financial institutions to report assets owned by US persons to the IRS. It is done directly or indirectly, depending on the FATCA enforcement rate. In essence, all foreign financial institutions are now forced to become agents of the IRS, reporting agents. This third-party verification of US tax compliance has been completely absent from US tax law. It simply did not exist before. For example, FBARs do not have any third-party verification. That is why, as an information return, FBARs actually have very limited utility. Now, let's see why foreign financial institutions comply with FATCA. There is a second part of FATCA, which is a 30% withholding tax on the gross amount of transactions. Can you imagine that? 30% withholding tax on the entire value of the transaction, not just the gain, but on the gross value. This means that if, for example, institution A is FATCA compliant and institution B is not, and your client sends $100,000 to institution B through institution...
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