Written by Alex Newman
As uncertainty grows surrounding a radical and deeply controversial addition to the sprawling U.S. tax regime, the Obama administration is now reportedly in negotiations with Moscow to share financial information with Vladimir Putin’s Russian government.
The U.S. Treasury’s effort to secure a pseudo-treaty on data exchange with the Kremlin is part of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA, a scheme passed in 2010 aiming to obliterate privacy worldwide under the guise of collecting about an extra billion dollars per year in revenue.
If approved, the unconstitutional bilateral agreement would represent a major victory for Putin, a KGB man widely criticized around the world for operating what opponents refer to as a “gangster” regime. Among other benefits, the Russian strongman would gain access to vast troves of U.S. financial information — including sensitive data on critics of his government who may have assets, accounts, or business interests in the United States.
A spokesperson for the Treasury refused to comment on what information would be shared with Putin’s government, or what purported authority justified the creation of the pseudo-treaty with Moscow in the first place.
However, as awareness of the looming deal spreads, legal, ethical, constitutional, and pragmatic concerns are escalating quickly.
The Obama administration and its global tax regime-supporting allies also have plenty to gain with FATCA. In essence, the widely criticized law — the Republican National Committee just overwhelmingly approved a resolution calling for its repeal — purports to force banks and governments all around the world to become agents of the IRS.
Already being seized on by tax-funded globalist outfits such as the OECD and the G-20 as the foundation for a planetary tax regime, FATCA will punish any entities that fail to report information on their clients to Washington with a massive “withholding tax.” In many cases, the companies will be forced to violate their own national laws to comply. The alternative, however, is to simply be shut out of U.S. markets entirely, the administration claims.
Eventually, the admitted goal is to create a global tax regime, sometimes referred to by analysts as GATCA.
Of course, for now, foreign governments want something in return for allowing themselves to become extensions of the U.S. Treasury and the IRS.
To deal with that problem, the Obama administration unilaterally created — without any statutory authority whatsoever — a system whereby cooperative foreign powers that do FATCA’s bidding are supposed to receive some benefits: financial information on accounts and assets held in American institutions. Because the administration did not have the power to force U.S. banks and companies to report such data, it simply passed executive “regulations” decreeing mandatory compliance.
According to news reports, Russian officials originally balked at the notion of forcing domestic banks and financial institutions to comply with the draconian new U.S. tax regime — proposed by the Obama administration and passed by mostly Democrats in 2010 as part of an unrelated “jobs” bill. In November, though, Putin’s Foreign Ministry said it supported the idea of a “mutual and balanced” information-sharing agreement between the two governments. In other words, Putin and the Kremlin want access to data, too, and will not cooperate with the Obama administration’s demands unless they get it.
That Russian Foreign Ministry statement appears to have been the turning point in getting Russian authorities on board with the FATCA scheme. Late last month, news reports and Russian officials formally announced that negotiations on an unconstitutional “intergovernmental agreement” to share data between the Obama administration and Moscow would begin soon in Paris. Few details have emerged so far, but Russian officials have indicated satisfaction with the plan. READ MORE>
