The Federal Authorities of the Swiss Confederation put out a statement on its website yesterday declaring that "Switzerland and the United States had amended the FATCA agreement in line with the new timetable for FATCA implementation by means of an exchange of notes."
According to the Confederation, the agreement was approved and the implementing act adopted in a final vote of parliament on 27 September 2013.
Under FATCA, Swiss banks will be expected to provide information on all accounts they hold that belong to Americans, whether they are resident in the US or elsewhere.
Switzerland’s evolution from a secretive Alpine tax haven to a more transparent international financial centre began in 2009, when Switzerland’s biggest bank, UBS, admitted to criminal wrong-doing by helping Americans to evade US taxes, and agreed to turn over more than 4,450 client names and pay a $780m fine.
Until that point, Switzerland’s strict, fiercely guarded banking secrecy rules had made it an attractive place to keep money that one did not wish others to know about.
Now its banks and financial institutions are having to find other reasons to attract investors, or at least, investors from countries like the US that have sought to learn more about money held there by their citizens.
