To combat the perceived avoidance of U.S. tax by U.S. persons holding securities with non-U.S. financial institutions, several proposals have been made to reinforce the U.S. withholding tax relief and reporting rules. IRS Announcement 2008-99 proposed the reporting of accounts opened by non-U.S. persons over which a U.S. person had certain authority. It also proposed to impose early notification of material failures of internal controls over a Qualified Intermediary's (QI)'s performance of its obligations contracted under a QI agreement. These proposals have, however, not come into effect as yet. In May 2009, president Obama released its Green Book proposing, amongst other things, to expand the Form 1099 information reporting obligations of QIs and to impose a 20% withholding tax on broker proceeds.
This part of the Green Book did not enter into effect either. Instead the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) was introduced on October 27, 2009 with a similar goal than that of the Green Book proposals but with a different approach. FATCA does not affect the obligations currently imposed by the QI agreement but imposes wholly new withholding, documentation and reporting obligations that will apply on top of the obligations already applicable under the QI regime.

A slightly amended version of the original FATCA provisions was subsequently integrated into the Tax Extenders Act of 2009. The said Act was approved by the House on December 9, 2009. A further amended version of the same provisions were finally integrated into the "Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment" (HIRE) Act that was approved by the U.S. Senate on February 24, 2010 and  by the House of Representatives on March 4, 2010. As the House had amended part of HIRE the Act was sent back to the Senate. The Senate voted the amended HIRE Act on March 17, 2010. On the next day, president Obama signed HIRE into law.