Residence Based Taxation Proposal

For the past few weeks there has been increasing speculation about the contents of a rumoured Residence Based Taxation proposal from Congressman George Holding’s office. Democrats Abroad reported that they had seen the proposal. Then Republicans Overseas were also on board. And, over on the American Expatriates Facebook Group, Keith Redmond reported on a meeting held at the offices of Americans for Tax Reform to discuss the proposal. It has been great to see such broad-based support for this much-needed reform. Continue reading “Residence Based Taxation Proposal”

What did we learn from our ATO FOI request?

While the 2014 FATCA information transfer to the IRS was widely reported, since then we have had no idea how much data has been flowing from the ATO to the IRS. To get a better idea of the scope of the data exchange, Carl sent an FOI request to the ATO for a summary of the data sent to the IRS under FATCA for all three reporting years that have now been completed (2014, 2015, and 2016). The ATO complied with this request in a timely manner, sending us a pdf file of a printout of an excel worksheet that spans several pages both vertically and horizontally. [1]

FATCA requires Australian financial institutions (very broadly defined) to report account holder details as well as account balance, dividends, interest and other income paid, and gross proceeds from sale or redemption to the ATO for transmittal to the IRS. It is evident from the graphs below that the amount of data going to the IRS has exploded since the initial data transfer of 2014 data (transferred 30 Sept 2015).

Continue reading “What did we learn from our ATO FOI request?”

FOI Request

On 29 November I submitted a Freedom of Information request to the ATO requesting copies of all data about my accounts that was sent to the IRS under FATCA. The fact that I had to ask is outrageous – account holders should be automatically notified when their data is sent overseas. But, current Australian privacy law does not require any notification. Continue reading “FOI Request”