Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has confirmed he is to bow to the demands of FATCA, America’s overreaching global tax law, and has agreed to pay a considerable tax bill to the U.S. Treasury Department.  This comes after he had previously vowed that it was “outrageous” for the U.S. to impose taxes on expat Americans – of which he is technically one having been born in New York and not having relinquished his American passport.

As a vocal and public opponent of FATCA, when this furore first came to light, I wrote a column for CITY AM newspaper in defence of the Mayor’s noble stand against this toxic tax act.

Yet before this opinion-led piece was published, I also forecast that he would, ultimately, need to fork out.

I was quoted in the media to this effect as saying: “Whilst Johnson is, in my opinion, on the right side of the fence morally on this issue – and I champion his brave stance against America’s flawed fiscal imperialism – by not paying the taxes required by the US because he still retains his American passport, he is now on the wrong side of the law. There are hefty penalties for non-compliance to America’s fiscal imperialism. With this in mind, I suspect Boris Johnson, who has highly-publicised major political ambitions, will be forced to re-evaluate his current position.”

The tax bill which he has now confirmed he is to pay relates to capital gains made from the sale of a house in the British capital.

Despite being rolled out on 1^st July last year, the FATCA debate certainly continues. And if anything it is intensifying due to the recently introduced data exchange scheme by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Under this new scheme, any government that has signed an Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) with the U.S. has the right to access the private financial information of its residents who hold American bank accounts or assets, including American clients.

This clearly seriously infringes on their privacy protection rights, and therefore – as many experts such as journalist Alex Newman in The New American are now pointing out – violating the Fourth Amendment.

With this in mind, I’m confident that the efforts being made by the likes of the Republican National Committee (RNC) and super lawyer Jim Bopp, amongst many others, to have FATCA repealed will take another step forward.

Nigel Green deVere Group

Blog written 23rd Jan