Some 29 Swiss banks, including UBS, Credit Suisse, Julius Baer and J. Safra Sarasin, have been warned that they have until April 13 to provide the U.S. tax authorities with information on their U.S. account-holders, as part of Switzerland's agreement to comply with the American anti-tax evasion law known as FATCA.

American expats and spokespeople for organizations representing them have been asking questions about the scale of U.S. expat data being forwarded to the U.S. under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, after the latest Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA) report of such data revealed that around two thirds of the accounts sent actually fell below the US$50,000 FATCA reporting minimum threshold. 

American households accounting for the top 1% in annual income are managing to avoid significantly more in income taxes than had been previously assumed, a research paper due to be released later today by the Internal Revenue Service and academics will reveal.

The Paris-based Association of Accidental Americans has announced that several of its members have been told that they face the closure of their BNB Paribas Private Bank accounts within two months, as they have failed to provide the bank's officials with a U.S. Social Security Number (SSN), which they don't have. 

A Swiss private bank that is said to be Zurich's oldest has agreed to pay the U.S. Justice Department US$22 million, in return for avoiding prosecution on grounds that it had helped certain of its American clients to avoid their U.S. tax obligations.

Eleven years ago today, in the Rose Garden of the White House, President Obama signed the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act into law – buried inside a domestic jobs bill known as the HIRE Act.

There's not much to say about FATCA that we and others didn't last year, when we marked the anti-tax evasion law's 10-year anniversary, as not a lot has changed about it since then.

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 decade-plus that it's been around. 

So we thought it might be fun, for a change, to mark the occasion of FATCA's coming into force eleven years ago today by compiling a list of eleven impossible-to-resist questions about it, in order to test just how well we've all been paying attention!
See below...

Two long-serving Democratic congressmen yesterday unveiled what they're calling the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act, which they say would "close egregious offshore tax loopholes that allow companies to avoid taxes" by making their U.S.-made profits to "magically appear on the books in tax havens like the Cayman Islands."

A survey of more than 400 U.S. expats has found that FATCA, banking/investment and retirement account issues, and issues having to do with tax generally are their top three concerns.

But perhaps surprisingly, "lack of representation in Congress" came in a strong contender in fourth place, and in total, 93% of those surveyed said they "do not feel they are fairly represented in Congress," according to the Association of Americans Resident Overseas, which carried out the research last October and November.

In what some campaigners for fairer treatment of EU/American dual nationals, particularly 'accidental Americans,' today hailed as a significant development, U.S. Treasury officials are reported to have agreed to meet with their EU counterparts to discuss FATCA-related issues, including those that these dual nationals are struggling with.