Liberty and justice for all United States persons abroad

The Isaac Brock Society

1,012 thoughts on “FATCA Discussion Thread (Ask your questions) Part One”

  2. I’ve also written a long email to Liberty (http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/index.php) setting out FATCA, IGAs, the UK’s role in enabling this and the experience in Switzerland which may make its way to the UK. They seem to be quite heavily involved in campaigning against the UK government’s Justice and Security Bill (ie snooping) and extradition. Maybe this will be right up their alley since it’s at the intersection of human rights and data protection.

    I think someone made the comment of how the names of legislation now are the opposite of what they really are. The UK’s Justice and Security Bill is another example.

    I was also listening to the BBC the other day and there was a political commentator making the point in relation to the US that so often politicians make the point that the preservation of something for a group requires the exact opposite from the individual. For example, preservation of security requires the sacrifice of individual rights. It seemed a particularly poignant comment at the time.

    I’m sure this isn’t the right place to put this but what happened to the forum? I was intending to send the contents of my two emails to one or two of the “ringleaders” via PM in case someone wanted to use it as a starting point for another email. I found myself regretting posting my email to Obama in the Tina Turner thread.

    @Em

    I too wondered about the Soros funding and the presence of a
    former congressman as a co-founder. I hope the topic piques their
    interest but, unfortunately, it’s not going to have the same feel good factor for “slacktivists” as banning the clubbing of baby seals. I suspect that a campaign formally adopted by them has a far
    greater chance of success than one started by any individual. Let’s see
    if they respond.

  3. @ Edelweiss

    I hope you get a response too. Regarding that SignOn petition I mentioned. I spotted a couple of interesting names there — #1203 Pam Anderson and #1278 Amy Grant — plus some Brockers of course. Perhaps bringing it back to the attention of Brockers will garner a few more signatures. At least the wording on the petition is okay and the comments attached to some of the signatures are quite interesting. The White House petition is now off the site because it fell far short of the 25,000 signatures needed to bring it to All Mighty King Obama’s perusal.

    http://signon.org/sign/repeal-fatca#privacy

  6. 2 good articles published a couple days ago:

    European Banking Federation : Focus on FATCA, Rome 1 February 2013

    The Chief Executive of the EBF said: “FATCA has now turned into a catalyst for an entirely new international fiscal landscape, in which financial intermediaries like banks are increasingly required to play the role of tax intermediaries and to report detailed information on investors. This is not our role.“

    “Clearly, a number of essential parts are still missing, as well as actual guidance, which complicates the efforts of the financial industry to be ready on time“

    And one about reciprocity:

    Exclusive: Foreigners’ accounts in U.S. banks eyed in tax crackdown

    “The Obama administration may soon ask Congress for the power to require more disclosure by U.S. banks of information about foreign clients’ accounts to those clients’ home governments, as part of a crackdown on tax evasion, sources said on Monday.“

    So Obama is going to ask congress to vote laws to allow reciprocity to happen. Let’s see how the banking lobby is going to work…

    And that was interesting too:

    “China has been publicly dismissive of FATCA, but it is talking with U.S. officials behind the scenes, sources said.”

    “France and Germany “have been asking for something more like full reciprocity,” said Jonathan Jackel, a lawyer with the law firm of Burt Staples & Maner LLP in Washington, D.C.“

    “The Texas Bankers Association is considering a lawsuit against the government to stop accountholder information sharing with Mexico, said Eric Sandberg, the group’s president“

    And why just with Mexico?

    And the article ends with

    “The United States should be moving toward full reciprocity,” said Georgetown Law School Professor Itai Grinberg, a former Treasury official, adding it would be “deeply hypocritical” of the United States to ask for U.S. taxpayer information “without offering some kind of reciprocity.“

    It’s getting interesting. Let’s count the points 🙂

  8. Expats Must Tell Spanish Tax Man About Offshore Assets
    So now we haven a Spanish FBAR.  Is a FATCA close behind.
    It is becoming a global trend.  Everyone tax authority wants to know where your money is, and the US seems to set the model to follow…

    British expats must comply with a new Spanish tax reporting requirement or face hefty fines.

    Brits who now live in Spain must tell the Hacienda – the country’s tax authority – about any offshore assets valued at more than £43,000.

    and look at the classes of assets they are looking for…  Sound familiar?

    All asset classes come under the new legislation which also includes stocks and shares, property and life insurance policies.

    The law also calls for the average values for bank accounts in the last three months of a year – this includes current and savings accounts and credit cards in all currencies.

    And penalties.. ?   I don’t think they want British living in Spain anymore, do they?  

    Failure to report accurately assets which are held overseas, and they include property, pension pots and bank accounts, could see fines of up to 150% of the asset’s value.

  9. re: Spain: Many of the exhorbiantly-taxed European countries have wealth taxes imposed upon their residents, reaching around the world. They already have the demand for those assets to be reported.  A portion of those (Norway, for example), do not apply those wealth taxes and reporting upon short term foreign residents.  A portion (Sweden, for example, effective 2007) have entirely removed the wealth tax and the reporting to support it.

     In the EU, the regs ought to force their Andorra or Luxembourgh accounts to anonymously send withheld income tax to their country on record—the only real problem being that in the case mentioned they would likely send the money to UK.  Also that the Andorra bank would not withhold wealth tax. And the only other real problem would be if the Brits had assets outside the EU.  So Spain and the EU really should not have a real problem— but this doesn’t stop them.

    The 150% assets penalty is a gem discovered and exported by Senator Carl Lenin.     

  10. A new site has been in development that ‘might’ be a good reference source in the future. I have been communicating with the developer to encourage him to be open to contra opinion links as well as those of the FICC, (FATCA Industrial Compliance Complex.)

    Here is the link…

    http://www.fatcalinks.com/

  11. I was just thinking what a gargantuan and politically unpopular task it might be for the US to actually provide reciprocity. Hypothetically speaking, it would require each US financial institution to interrogate each customer and ask each customer of which countries they are a citizen. Anything less isn’t reciprocity.

    Obviously, non-US citizens won’t matter since they don’t vote. But will the US really transmit financial information of US resident US citizens who have dual nationality? It’s what reciprocity would require. Would they really do this when they know that the receiving country can’t use the information?

    I was trying to see if I could find out how much of a political issue this might become but I haven’t been able to find anything reliable indicating how many US resident US citizens are also dual citizens. The biggest number I found was 40 million but that was a 2004 number referring to an estimate of many US citizens were eligible for a second nationality (http://money.cnn.com/2004/10/08/real_estate/mil_life/twopassports/) and originated from the CUNY Center for Immigration Studies. Even if it’s a fraction of that, there might finally be an awakening if US resident US citizens are required to be reported on to comply with “reciprocity”.

  12. @ Edelweiss, re; “I was just thinking what a gargantuan and politically unpopular task it might be for the US to actually provide reciprocity. Hypothetically speaking, it would require each US financial institution to interrogate each customer and ask each customer of which countries they are a citizen. Anything less isn’t reciprocity. ”

    Have a good read through the minutes of this hearing. It demonstrates some direct primary source evidence of the political resistance to the idea of US financial institutions giving up that information to the IRS and to other countries. In this hearing, they pretend it is based on lofty ideals – like a right to financial privacy – that they state should extend to those banking in the US – but not to us! They lament the potential loss of a major portion of their depositors – particularly cited are Florida, Texas and California, as well as in other states that border with Mexico.

    One speaker even directly states that Canada has a robust and safe banking system (but that does not of course work to get the US to exempt Canada from FATCA).

    One US politician defends the US – and says that there is no evidence that the US is a tax haven for other countries. The IRS legal counsel being interviewed – Wilkins, defends why the US should require reporting from everyone else, and thus needs to offer at least some type of reciprocity.

    This document is probably posted elsewhere at IBS, but it is really enjoyable reading re US domestic resistance to the DATCA component of FATCA (and the hypocrisy and bald self interest is clearly on display):

    Features some of the US figures that have become so familiar to us who read here.
    “PROPOSED REGULATIONS TO REQUIRE
    REPORTING OF NONRESIDENT ALIEN
    DEPOSIT INTEREST INCOME
    HEARING
    BEFORE THE
    SUBCOMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS
    AND CONSUMER CREDIT
    OF THE
    COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES
    U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
    ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
    FIRST SESSION
    OCTOBER 27, 2011
    Printed for the use of the Committee on Financial Services
    Serial No. 112–78”
    http://financialservices.house.gov/uploadedfiles/112-78.pdf

  15. Nobody else seems to remark on the fact that the US Banks would only be asked to report on deposit interest income.
    Interest income these days is often negligible . Many accounts are not deposit accounts. FFIs on the other hand would report Balances and US ‘persons’ are supposed to report all kinds of income including accrued income. Quite a difference.

  16. @Duke of Devan…

    Well, I think some are beginning to wake up how out of balance the so called reciprocity is in the IGAs. You only have compare the provisions of Article 2 (a) and 2 (b) in the UK IGA, to begin to understand. 🙂 http://1.usa.gov/WBIAcr

    And then look at even just the DATE OF Birth stuff that the UK wants and the ITN numbers which will not be promised by the US until Jan 1, 2017. If and when they get legislation to approve gather than information.

    That is in Article 6 (4a)

  17. This may have been posted earlier, but I only noticed it just now. Charles Adams has it partially right but he still does not understand the real impact of FATCA on long term ex-pats. Perhaps he needs to be educated.

  22. This question is a bit off topic, but I wasn’t sure where else to post it.

    I will have to travel to the USA in the not too distant future, most likely by air. I am Canadian with a US birthplace and have a Canadian passport . I have no US passport, and no SSN, and plan to keep it that way. I cannot relinquish since I was born a dual-citizen, and have no plans to renounce at this time, so do not have a CLN. My decision for now, is to lay low, not quite the ostrich maneuver, but definitely a wait and see approach. In the meantime I need to figure out how to deal with the border crossing issue.

    I know I am ‘supposed’ to travel into the US with a US passport. I was wondering if border crossings, by air in particular, are becoming more of an issue now for someone in my situation who has a Canadian passport with the dreaded US birthplace.

    I was trying to find an older post on this site that was intended to keep track of people’s experiences with US border crossings, but can’t find it. Can someone point me in the right direction?

  23. WhiteKat – To my knowledge this info is scattered and not organized. It could be and should be self-organized. Filtration through intermediary data massager is not a robust set-up. My first time ever into the US on Canadian passport, by air, post-renunciation – the only interaction with the US border official was him letting me know that he was scrutinizing that particular piece of birthplace info by asking an unnecessary question related to that item in the passport. Lots of luck.

  24. JBA Says Local US Account Holders Safe http://bit.ly/XxwHQM

    The Jamaica Bankers Association (JBA) says it’s unlikely that any local bank will close out individual US accounts to avoid the costs associated with the US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA).

    “I am not aware of any commercial banks that are refusing to do business with US citizens or are asking US citizens to move their accounts,” said JBA President Bruce Bowen.

    “So long as a commercial bank or other financial institution maintains correspondent banking arrangements or bank accounts in the US, they are not able to avoid dealing with FATCA, either by agreeing with the IRS to adhere to the reporting requirements or by accepting the penalty costs of doing business without agreeing,” he said.

Comments are closed.

%d bloggers like this: