Charles Rettig, whose four years as commissioner of the IRS quietly came to an end on Nov. 12, will join former National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson next Wednesday (Feb. 1) in a Zoom webinar discussion about "The Future of IRS Funding."

The event, which is the latest in Tax Analysts' regular series of "Taxing Issues" webinars, will take place between 2pm and 3pm Eastern Standard Time (7pm and 8pm GMT), and will also feature also feature Michael Desmond, a former IRS chief counsel and now a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.

Nina E. Olson, who outspokenly served for more than 18 years as the IRS's National Taxpayer Advocate, will testify tomorrow (May 11) during a U.S. Senate Subcommittee hearing on the subject of "Closing the Tax Gap: Lost Revenue from Non-compliance, and the Role of Offshore Tax Evasion." 

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...

The U.S. Treasury Department and IRS have named an ex-KPMG executive to succeed Nina E. Olson as National Taxpayer Advocate. 

Richard E. Neal, the chairman of the Democrat-controlled Ways and Means Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, and Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee chairman John Lewis have called for the "immediate appointment" of a permanent National Taxpayer Advocate to succeed Nina Olson, who stepped down at the end of July.

In her 2019 Annual Report to Congress, acting National Taxpayer Advocate Bridget Roberts said the U.S. IRS needed to significantly raise its game with respect to the way it carries out its role as the nation's tax collecting agency.

But to "truly transform the organization" – which, she noted in a  five-page preface to this year's NTA report, Congress effectively called on it to do last year when it passed the so-called Taxpayer First Act – the IRS "needs to rethink the way it operates", starting with "a culture shift".

Soon-to-retire National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson has stepped into a growing debate in the U.S. about whether the IRS should expand an existing option to enable taxpayers with simple tax matters to file their federal returns online, and for free.

Nina Olson, who has spoken out forcefully on behalf of American expatriates a number of  times in recent years during her tenure as the IRS's National Taxpayer Advocate, has announced that she will be retiring at the end of July.

The National Taxpayer Advocate's latest Annual Report to Congress largely ignores the struggles American expatriates have been facing, an examination of the various documents that comprise it reveals.