IRS Unable to Enforce FATCA

Very surprising admission by the IRS Commissioner.

Written Testimony of Charles P. Rettig, Commissioner Internal Revenue Service before the House Ways and Means Committee, Subcommittee on Oversight on the Filing Season and IRS Operations (March 17, 2022)

"Because of our current funding and staffing limitations across our enforcement functions, we are forced to make difficult decisions regarding priorities, the types of enforcement actions we employ, and the service we offer. Limited IT resources preclude us from building adequate solutions for efficiently matching or reconciling data from multiple sources. As a result, we are often left with manual processes to analyze reporting information we receive. Such is the case with data from the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). Congress enacted FATCA in 2010, but we have yet to receive any significant funding appropriation for its implementation. This situation is compounded by the fact that when we do detect potential non-compliance or fraudulent behavior through manually generated FATCA reports, we seldom have sufficient funding to pursue the information and ensure proper compliance. We have an acute need for additional personnel with specialized training to follow cross-border money flows. They will help ensure tax compliance by improving our capacity to detect unreported accounts and income generated by those accounts, as well as the sources of assets in offshore accounts."

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