Regulatory Information

The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) is part of the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act, which was passed into US law on 18 March 2010. FATCA is designed to increase tax compliance from US taxpayers living outside the USA. Under FATCA, Foreign Financial Institutions (FFIs) (i.e. financial institutions based outside the USA) are required to report to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) about their US clients.

The United Kingdom signed an Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) with the USA on 12 September 2012. These regulations impose obligations on UK financial institutions to identify, maintain and report information to HMRC on financial accounts held by US citizens and entities.

Under FATCA, Brooks Macdonald Asset Management Limited (BMAM) will be required to undertake enhanced due diligence procedures and conduct pre-existing account searches to identify account holders who are US persons. BMAM will be further required to report information about the financial accounts of US persons to HMRC in the UK, who will then share this information with the IRS. BMAM has registered with the IRS for these purposes.

FFIs and their clients that do not comply with the requirements of FATCA will suffer a 30% withholding tax on all US sourced income or payments remitted to them by US paying agents or other FFIs.

The Common Reporting Standard (CRS) is the result of the drive by the G20 nations to develop a global standard for the automatic exchange of financial account information. Developed by the OECD, the CRS requires financial institutions to identify the territory in which an Account Holder or a Controlling Person is resident for income tax or corporation tax purposes, or for the purposes of any other tax of a similar character that has been imposed by that territory. Customer information for non-resident investors will be reported locally (i.e. to HMRC in the UK) and then shared with relevant tax authorities around the world.