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FATCA is one of the most ambitious and controversial bodies of legislation in the recent history of taxation. It was born from the ashes of the US tax scandal, and seeks to combat offshore tax evasion by us persons through the use of non-us financial entities and investment structures. Historically, us persons seeking to evade us taxation have favoured this strategy because of the robust bank secrecy laws in many jurisdictions (notably, Switzerland). FATCA attempts to eliminate this type of tax evasion by imposing an innovative withholding tax on certain us-source payments to specified foreign entities if the entities fail to report information regarding their us owners and account holders to the IRS, perform due diligence to discover these owners and account holders, and make any required withholdings.