Are you ready for FATCA 

ADRIAN HARKIN: Many are responding by saying, not again, here’s another large scale change program with no competitive advantage.

LAURIE HATTEN-BOYD: The response was that legislation of this size just wasn’t going to work, and either the legislation was going to be repealed, or there were going to be such broad based carveouts that it wasn’t going to apply to them.

CHARLES KINSEY: Locally, in most countries within Asia, there still is a lot more denial, but as there’s more publicity around it, and there’s more,

they’ve seen more of what the multinationals are doing, they’re starting to consider their position with regard to FATCA.

LAURIE HATTEN-BOYD: FATCA is a piece of legislation that is designed to force foreign entities and foreign corporations that deal with U.S. persons to disclose those persons to the IRS.

ADRIAN HARKIN: The IRS estimate that $100 billion every year goes unpaid by U.S. citizens, and the approach that’s been taken with FATCA is to focus on payment flows through financial organizations and to figure out how you can get a hold of the money.

Financial services organizations should be focused on FATCA, because if they want to do business with the U.S. in any way, then they need to be FATCA compliant.

LAURIE HATTEN-BOYD: The legislation is all about the disclosure of information that they have with respect to their U.S. accounts, but the way the U.S. government compels them to provide this information to them is this stick

Which is the 30% penal withholding.

CHARLES KINSEY: If they don’t follow through and implement, chances are that they, not only themselves, but their clients as well can suffer the 30% withholding tax, and therefore, that would also look to drive clients away to institutions who are compliant.

ADRIAN HARKIN: FATCA requires the whole organization to mobilize, is going to require significant changes to the operating model, or in customer onboarding, withholding, reporting, this isn’t a tax issue, this is a hugely complex change delivery program.

LAURIE HATTEN-BOYD: Back in 2001, with the QI network, KPMG set up its model very differently, and we had U.S. withholding tax specialists around the globe. Once FATCA came about, these U.S. withholding specialists became specialists in FATCA.

CHARLES KINSEY: We also have a lot of operational tax people across the globe who are well connected and are always working together.

ADRIAN HARKIN: FATCA delivery requires individuals

that understand and have experience of a much broader range of disciplines than is common in a project in financial services. KPMG has 300 accredited FATCA consultants who have come through our FATCA academy who understand the full life cycle of the program and of all of the operational and technical content required to deliver FATCA.

KPMG’s well known for its depth in financial services, unique depth and insight in order to deliver FATCA. With a 42% market share in global tax operations, we really know how to do this.