Cyprus banks in the process of implementing FATCA
In the fight against tax evasion, member banks of the Association of Cyprus Banks (ACB) are currently in the process of implementing the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), in anticipation of the upcoming intergovernmental agreement between the United States of America and Cyprus, ACB Director General Michael Kammas said.
Speaking at a banking seminar in Limassol, titled “Challenges Faced by Banks and Financial Institutions in Implementing International Regulations & Legislations”, Kammas said that “the Association is working with the Ministry of Finance and the Commissioner for data protection in order to ensure that banks can implement FATCA while at the same time remaining compliant with local law requirements related to privacy, data protection and anti-discrimination”.
“It is now recognized that automatic exchange of information will gradually take place at the global level and that FATCA is the pre-cursor of this development” he noted.
In recognition that tax evasion is a global problem and as such requires a global solution, the OECD has developed the new Common Reporting Standard for automatic exchange of information between tax authorities, Kammas said, adding that this initiative has been embraced by the European Union as well as numerous other countries and its ambitious implementation timetable by as early as 2016, sets out the latest challenge for the banking sector.
