United States and France sign FATCA agreement

The US Treasury Department announced on Thursday that the United States and France have signed a bilateral agreement requiring French banks to report to the French government information about their US account holders. The government of France will forward that information to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the US tax agency, and in return the IRS will provide similar information to France about French account holders at US financial institutions.

France was one of six countries (along with Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK and the US) that participated in developing model intergovernmental agreements designed to implement the information-reporting and tax-withholding provisions of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). This US law, enacted in 2010, requires non-US financial institutions to report information about financial accounts held by US taxpayers or by foreign entities in which US taxpayers hold a substantial interest. 

The agreement with France is the tenth FATCA intergovernmental agreement signed to date, the Treasury Department reports.

—Alistair Nevius (anevius@aicpa.org) is editor-in-chief, tax for CGMA Magazine.