In against to 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). They have expected to implement the act in the upcoming intergovernmental agreement between the United States of America and Cyprus.
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. The automatic exchange of information will gradually take place at the global level and that FATCA is the pre-cursor of this development where the OECD has developed the new Common Reporting Standard for automatic exchange of information between tax authorities.
ACB Director General Michael Kammas said, 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.
