An issue has been identified in which FATCA XML documents fail schema validation when default namespaces are used. This is a temporary issue that will be fixed in February 2015.

According to IRS announcement, Financial institutions and host country tax authorities will use IDES to securely send their information reports on financial accounts held by U.S. persons to the IRS under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) or pursuant to the terms of an intergovernmental agreement (IGA), as applicable. “The opening of the International Data Exchange Service is a milestone in the implementation of FATCA,” said IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. “With i

Publication 5190, a draft version of FATCA IDES User Guide was released by the IRS. The FATCA International Date Exchange Service (IDES) will serve Foreign Financial Institutions (FFI’s) and Host Country Tax Authorities for transmitting and exchanging FATCA data with the IRS.

The IRS posted Publication 5188, FATCA Metadata XML Schema v1.0 The guidance explains the process of preparation and validation of the IDES metadata file used in FATCA reporting.

The IRS posted an update to the instraction for Form 8966, FATCA Report, for use by certain entities that are required to report information with respect to certain U.S. accounts.