The Treasury Department has reached an agreement with the governments of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom for designing a framework to implement the information reporting and withholding provisions by foreign financial institutions under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA).

According to Treasury's news release, the governments expressed their “mutual intent to pursue a government-to-government framework for implementing FATCA—an important step toward addressing legal impediments to financial institutions' ability to comply with the regulations.”

The news release and joint statement were issued in conjunction with Internal Revenue Service proposed regulations (REG-121647-10) related to information reporting and withholding provisions by foreign financial institutions.