Singapore banks want exemption from US FATCA rules

Banks in Singapore are lobbying against the US' Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act or Fatca.

The act will require foreign financial institutions to look for and report American account holders or face a 30 per cent witholding tax on American investments from 2013.

DBS chief executive Piyush Gupta said that if banks had to go through with all the compliance activities in the United States, the costs could be quite prohibitive.

'Some of the provisions are clearly to my mind extra-jurisidictional and extra-territorial, and they wind up with a huge cost impact on international financial institutions,' he said at the bank's full-year results briefing.

Other South-east Asian bank associations arfe also seeking exemptiuon from the US compliance rule.

The banks have sent a letter to the US Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service last year to make their case.

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