The name of the bill is the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act (H.R. 2487) commonly known as the HIRE Act. This is the jobs incentive bill that was signed by the President on March 18th amid little fanfare.
Relatively small by Washington standards (“just” an $18 billion stimulus package) the bill was drafted to provide incentives to employers to hire more people but contains some very disturbing language concerning the ownership and transference of money to any overseas account. The truly galling part of the bill is that it attempts to require “foreign financial and non-financial institutions to withhold 30% of payments made to such institutions by U.S. individuals unless such institutions agree to disclose the identity of such individuals and report on the bank transactions”. Think about this – the U.S. government is attempting to strong arm foreign financial and non-financial institutions (think banks and law firms) to either withhold 30% of the transactions in a U.S. individual’s account (and presumably remit this to the U.S. Treasury) or disclose the account details to the U.S.. The language of the bill addresses both bank accounts and any foreign trusts (ie- Private Interest Foundations).
But what if a foreign, sovereign country has laws against the disclosure of this information? Well, the bill contemplates this as well. Here’s the actual language from the bill:
‘‘(F) in any case in which any foreign law would (but
for a waiver described in clause (i)) prevent the reporting
of any information referred to in this subsection or subsection
(c) with respect to any United States account maintained
by such institution—
‘‘(i) to attempt to obtain a valid and effective
waiver of such law from each holder of such account,
and
‘‘(ii) if a waiver described in clause (i) is not
obtained from each such holder within a reasonable
period of time, to close such account.” (my emphasis)
In other words, under this legislation, a U.S. citizen having an account with a foreign institution will be required to waive the privacy protection afforded by local law. If they fail to do this, the financial or non-financial institution is required to close the account.
(Read more from primapanama.blogs.com)