The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) is a set of US regulations that came into effect on 1 January 2014 and affects all countries. It requires financial institutions outside the USA to disclose information on US accounts to the Internal Revenue Service or levy a tax. The detailed implementation of FATCA will be regulated bilaterally in an agreement.

Switzerland's existing FATCA agreement with the United States, in force since 2 June 2014, currently implements FATCA according to Model 2, which means that Swiss financial institutions disclose account details directly to the US tax authority with the consent of the US clients concerned. Where US clients do not give their consent, the United States has to request this data through normal administrative assistance channels. By contrast, no account data is transmitted from the United States to Switzerland.

In October 2014, the Federal Council decided to introduce the automatic exchange of information on tax matters, based on a multilateral agreement developed by the OECD. Consequently, it instructed the Federal Department of Finance to enter into negotiations with the United States, which is not a signatory to the multilateral agreement, to switch from Model 2 to Model 1. Under Model 1, the tax authorities of both countries mutually exchange information on account data automatically. Following the negotiations, Switzerland and the United States signed a new FATCA agreement in Bern on 27 June 2024. This means that Switzerland should also receive account data from the United States in the future. Swiss financial institutions will no longer provide the required data to the US authorities, but rather to the Federal Tax Administration, which will then transmit it to the Internal Revenue Service.

Implementation of the new FATCA agreement requires national law to be amended. In Switzerland, the Federal Assembly will decide on this. According to the current schedule, Switzerland's change of model should come into force on 1 January 2027.

Federal Council initiates consultation on changing the FATCA model