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Recently, Switzerland and Japan announced they had signed agreements with the US to facilitate the implementation of FATCA reporting by institutions within their respective jurisdictions.  Instead of reporting all client data direct to the IRS, Swiss and Japanese financial institutions will be allowed to pass only a limited subset of client details to the IRS. The rest of the FATCA-required information will only be available to the IRS via a direct request to the Swiss or Japanese government.  While the US is showing some flexibility here, the noose is still being tightened!  Read the whole story.

Original Source, STEP Journal, 25 June 2012