Today, March 18, 2023, is the 13th anniversary of the signing into law of FATCA. And as we've done in the past, we're marking the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act's 13th "birthday" today by sharing some of our favorite, impossible-to-resist questions about it, in order to test just how well we've all been paying attention.

We're doing this because we know only too well that, without really meaning to, many American expatriates as well as tax industry experts, lawyers and others have become experts on the subject of FATCA over the past 13 years it's been around...   

European Union and U.S. officials did, in fact, discuss "issues relating to the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA)" at a meeting of the U.S. - EU Joint Financial Regulatory Forum, as EU official had been anticipating and planning for, ahead of the Feb. 7 - 8 meeting, an official joint statement of the meeting has revealed.

If you were thinking of planning a protest by expatriate Americans against the U.S. system of citizenship-based taxation, it's difficult to think of a better day to do it than the date when expatriate American expats are obliged to file their U.S. tax returns by – which is to say, June 15 (two months after U.S. taxpayers' taxes are due). 

The European Union intends to "ask about the posibility [of] a more permanent solution" to the problems Europe's "accidental Americans" are continuing to struggle with as a result of the 2010 U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act this week, when the latest in a regular series of bilateral meetings between the EU and U.S. is set to take place, an EU official has said. 

The U.S. must make some significant changes to the way it applies regulations set out under its 2010 Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act to those dual U.S./EU citizens known as "accidental Americans," according to a report just released by seven EU Petitions Committee members who conducted a five-day "fact-finding mission" in Washington, DC last July. 

The Internal Revenue Service has quietly announced that it is introducing "temporary U.S. Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN) relief" for non-U.S. banks and other "foreign financial institutions" located in certain countries, so that they won't be deemed to be in "significant non-compliance" of their obligations under the U.S. tax evasion-prevention law known as FATCA, because one or more of their apparently American citizen account-holders say they're unable to provide them with their U.S. taxpayer identification number (TIN).

(...but it's said no more reciprocal than other Model 1 IGAs)

Argentina has at last agreed a FATCA Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) with the U.S. government, according to a statement on the website of the U.S. Embassy in Argentina, tax industry sources, and news reports in that country.

Until now, Argentina had not participated in the U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Agreement program, which was signed into law in 2010, and came into force in 2014.

In 2010, when President Obama signed the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act into law – hidden inside a domestic jobs bill few still remember, called the HIRE Act – Rebecca Lammers had been only been living in London for a few years, although she'd done a couple of semesters of college abroad (in Ecuador and London).

 After a Washington DC judge on Wednesday dismissed a crowd-funded legal challenge brought last year by a Paris-based organization of accidental Americans and around nine co-plaintiffs over the way their ability to "voluntarily expatriate" had become all-but-impossible – which they said was a violation of the U.S. Constitution – the plaintiffs gave notice yesterday of their plans to appeal.