Belgian Court Reverses Accidental Americans Data Transfer Ruling

A Brussels appeals court reversed a Belgian data protection authority’s decision to block information exchange of financial accounts for tax purposes with the US.

The ruling from the Brussels Market Court on Wednesday sends the case back to the Belgian Data Protection Authority that first stopped Federal Public Service Finance, the Belgian tax authority, from sharing information with the US government earlier this year under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act.

FATCA, an extraterritorial law that is meant to mitigate tax evasion, obliges foreign financial institutions to send account data of US nationals to the IRS.

The Brussels court rejected ...