During the dates of August 29-30, the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) hosted a seminar on International Taxation with the primary themes being the United States Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and information on taxation issues in Latin America and the Caribbean. The latter being captured in the recent IADB publication titled “More than Revenue” and in the CIAT, IADB, CAPTAC-DR, joint publication on the “State of Tax Administration in Latin America 2006-2010.”

The event took place at the IADB headquarters in Washington, DC and was co-sponsored by the IADB, US Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and CIAT. In attendance were over 50 senior tax administration, ministry of finance and government banking officials from Latin America and the Caribbean. Among CIAT member countries, present were the Director Generals from Barbados, Colombia, Costa Rica, Surinam and other officials.

On the first day, US Treasury Department and IRS officials made detailed presentations on FATCA-related issues. Ms. Danielle E. Rolfes, International Tax

Counsel, provided information on the US law, as well as, required actions by the involved foreign finance institutions. (The statute goes into effect on July 1, 2014.) A significant amount of time was allocated to options exercised by some governments to enter into an Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) with the US. These agreements would be in the nature of an automatic exchange agreement and would required financial institutions reporting directly to their governments rather than to the US IRS. The countries would in turn exchange this information automatically with the US IRS.

Regarding the administration of these agreements, Mr. Michael Danilack, IRS Deputy Commissioner (International), made an excellent presentation on how these complex agreements would be executed and administered. Both the financial institution agreements as well as the intergovernmental automatic exchange agreements require detailed planning and certain levels of IT systems sophistication.

A discussion panel followed these presentations where Brazil, Chile, and Mexico spoke on their actions to enter into intergovernmental agreements with the US and actions being taken by financial institutions in their countries.

The second day of the seminar were dedicated to presentations on Latin American tax issues and the previously cited publications. Presentations were made by Alberto Barreix from the IADB and Socorro Velazquez from CIAT.

Guest speakers included Mr. Michael Keen from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Dr. Vito Tanzi, former Director of Fiscal Affairs at the IMF.

Both of these two-day sessions were met with much interest by all attendees.

From left to right: Moderator: Alberto Barreix: Principal Technical Leader, IFD/FMM – IADB; Brett York, Attorney-Advisor, Office of the International Tax Counsel, U.S. Dept. of the Treasury; Elena S. Virgadamo, Attorney-Advisor, Office of the International Tax Counsel, U.S. Dept. of the Treasury y Danielle E. Rolfes, International Tax Counsel, U.S. Dept. of the Treasury.