FATCA – Registration Portal Delayed And Certain Deadlines Extended

On July 12, 2013, the Internal Revenue Service announced revised timelines in connection with the staged implementation of the various due diligence, verification, withholding, and reporting requirements contained in IRC sections 1471 - 1474, commonly known as the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA. The announcement, set forth in Notice 2013-43 (the "Notice"), provides that the FATCA registration Portal will not be available by the promised date of July 15, 2013, extends the deadline for participating foreign financial institutions to diligence their accounts for US accounts by six months, extends other key dates with respect to the implementation of FATCA by six months, and announces relief for financial institutions that are in the process of negotiating FATCA implementation agreements with the United States.

Important developments set forth in the Notice include:

The contemplated online FATCA registration system (the "Portal"), previously promised to be available by July 15, 2013, is now projected to be available on August 19, 2013. Registering financial institutions will have until January 1, 2014 to finalize their registration, at which point FATCA registration numbers, or GIINs, will be issued. IRS intends to provide a list of jurisdictions that will be treated as having in effect an intergovernmental agreement, or IGA, with the United States for FATCA purposes even if such IGA has not yet entered into force as of July 1, 2014, with the result that financial institutions organized in such jurisdictions will be permitted to register on the Portal as...