Research On The Tax Compliance Act Of U.S. Overseas Accounts

Anti-tax evasion is an important issue in the field of international tax law.With the continuous progress of economic globalization,the issue of international anti-tax evasion has become more and more complicated.As one of the countries with the largest overseas investment in the world,the United States has always attached great importance to the supervision of overseas accounts of domestic taxpayers.However,it turns out that many regulatory measures implemented by the US government,including Qualified Intermediary and Overseas Voluntary Disclosure Program,have failed to achieve their expected tax collection and supervision goals.At the same time,the exposure of the Swiss Union Bank case further revealed the fact that US taxpayers used overseas financial institutions to evade US tax collection and supervision.After the financial crisis,the US federal fiscal pressure increased sharply.To alleviate the predicament,the Obama administration finally signed the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act.The bill forms the core of the US overseas account tax compliance system,which mainly includes the information reporting system,withholding tax system,intergovernmental agreement system,and exemption system.These systems together constitute a complete tax information supervision system for taxpayers' overseas accounts.However,because the unilateralism pursued by the act has a major impact on the tax laws of various countries,for example,the U.S.government requires financial institutions in other countries to report to it the information on U.S.customers it owns,otherwise financial institutions must pay of their US-sourced income 30% Withholding tax,so the act has been widely questioned and criticized by all walks of life since its inception.But the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act was finally implemented in 2013.At present,although our government has initially reached an intergovernmental agreement with the United States government to implement the bill,due to the heavy information reporting obligations imposed on foreign financial institutions by the bill and potential conflicts with China's current legal system.Therefore,the formal signing of the agreement to implement the bill will have a significant impact on the operation of China's financial institutions,domestic related legal systems,and the actual tax benefits that can be obtained.And this influence has a long-term and profound impact on China's economic development and legal system.For a long time,there have been many gaps in China's taxpayer information collection system,and the implementation of the US overseas account tax compliance system has exposed these drawbacks.At the same time,with the deepening of international tax collection and management cooperation,the exchange of tax information between governments has gradually developed into a mainstream trend,and China also has a certain lag in the relevant system of international tax information exchange.In order to safeguard national tax interests and avoid adverse effects,China should improve the current tax collection and supervision legal system in a timely manner to better adapt to the future development trend of international tax law.Specifically,China should deal with the impact brought by the US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act by actively reaching an intergovernmental agreement with the United States,improving the multilateral tax information sharing system,and improving our tax supervision system.