The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (Fatca) requires US tax payers to report their non-US financial accounts annually for tax purposes and asks non-US financial institutions to scan their records for such accounts. The law was enacted in 2010 and is now coming into effect. But it has attracted wide-ranging criticism, including of the cost of implementation, which some say will outweigh the benefits, as well as providing an disincentive for financial institutions to invest in US assets or for them even to divest US assets, resulting in capital flight.

The law has already been dubbed “an American tax nightmare” by the New York Times. It's now under fire from the deVere Group, an independent financial advisory organisation, which says more must urgently be done to repeal Fatca.

Nigel Green, founder and chief executive of deVere Group, is urging candidates in the US presidential elections to prioritise Fatca on America’s political agenda for the 2016 election. He calls on presidential candidates to justify why they support it or to articulate why they believe it is fundamentally flawed, saying: “Fatca adversely affects millions of hardworking, middle class Americans around the world, plus US companies that operate internationally – and, therefore, it impacts US jobs and the American economy.”

According to Forbes, Fatca requires foreign banks to reveal “Americans with accounts over $50,000”, so it's debatable just how much it will affect the middle class.

Green believes that Fatca provides “a masterclass in the law of unintended consequences”, by causing American citizens overseas to be rejected by banks in their country of residence because “Fatca’s costly and burdensome regulations mean they are now typically deemed more trouble than they are worth”. DeVere puts the number of US citizens overseas, Green Card holders and 'accidental Americans' affected by the law at 7.6 million, saying that Fatca makes them 'financial pariahs'.

The law also applies to US firms operating internationally. Green adds: “Questions should be asked about the imperialist characteristics of Fatca. Governments and foreign financial institutions have been coerced into complying with its expensive, onerous, privacy-infringing, sovereignty-violating regulations by the US – or face heavy penalties and the prospect of being effectively frozen out of US markets.”

Green expresses concern that Fatca also paves the way for 'Gatca', or 'global Fatca, a proposal from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), mandated by the G-20, which would introduce a global exchange of financial account data for tax purposes. He calls the proposal 'Fatca on steroids' and goes as far as to say it would pose a “risk to human rights”.