Federal Council opens consultation on change to FATCA model

At its meeting on March 7, 2025, the Federal Council opened the consultation process for a new FATCA agreement.

In future, Switzerland will no longer only unilaterally provide information on financial accounts to the USA, but will also receive information from the USA as part of an automatic exchange of information. The consultation will last until June 14, 2025.

The existing FATCA agreement between Switzerland and the USA, which has been in force since June 2, 2014, currently implements FATCA according to Model 2. Under this model, Swiss financial institutions report account data directly to the US tax authorities with the consent of the US clients concerned. The USA must request data on non-consenting US clients via the normal administrative assistance channels. Conversely, no account data flows from the USA to Switzerland.

On June 27, 2024, Switzerland and the USA signed a new FATCA agreement in Bern following the conclusion of negotiations. This means that Switzerland will now also receive account data from the USA. The Swiss financial institutions will not provide the required data to the US authorities as before, but to the FTA, which will then transmit it to the US tax authorities.

According to current planning, Switzerland's model change should come into force on January 1, 2027.

The consultation draft is available here, the law here, the federal decree here and the agreement here.