July 4 is US Independence Day July 1 is most definitely not.
The first day of the month brings the first hard deadline for the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act FATCA, which seeks to identify the American customers of financial institutions globally.
FATCA is effectively the latest US effort to clamp down on tax havens and tax evasion, which costs countries billions of dollars each year the US alone is estimated to have lost $3 trillion in the past 10 years.
Much has been written as to the merits or otherwise of the scheme, which financial institutions must comply with or face large...