UK - US Automatic Exchange of Information Agreement

Updated 11 June 2020

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The UK-US Agreement

The government (along with France, Germany, Italy, and Spain) and with the support of the European Commission took part in joint discussions with the US government to explore an intergovernmental approach to The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), supporting the overall aim to combat tax evasion, while reducing risks and burdens on financial institutions. A model intergovernmental agreement (IGA) was developed and published in July 2012.The UK and the US signed an IGA - the ‘UK-US Agreement to Improve International Tax Compliance and to Implement FATCA’ - in September 2012 (see the ‘Current documents’ section below). Annex II of the IGA was amended by an exchange of notes between the 2 governments dated 3 June and 7 June 2013 (see the ‘Current documents’ section below).

The IGA reduces some of the administrative burden of complying with the US regulations, and provides a mechanism for UK financial institutions to comply with their obligations without breaching the data protection laws.

The International Tax Compliance (United States of America) Regulations 2013 were introduced to implement the IGA. These were revoked by the International Tax Compliance (United States of America) Regulations 2014, which were in turn revoked and superseded by the International Tax Compliance Regulations 2015.