Draft Fatca regulations will include reciprocity, experts say – Risk.net.
Reciprocity? I think we all understand that’s useless, no?
Draft Fatca regulations will include reciprocity, experts say – Risk.net.
Reciprocity? I think we all understand that’s useless, no?
Yes, though not as much other places along the border at least within the last few decades. Windsor is much smaller than Detroit but is still fairly large today at least with several major hospitals. I believe Sarnia and Port Huron are about equal in size and the Canadian Sault Ste Marie is actually bigger than the American one. What you are describing is and was somewhat more common in places like Southern Quebec/Eastern Ontario and NY/VT but in many places it can go the other way too. As you pointed out Campobello is a real problem spot.
One obvious case similiar to Campobello going to other way is Point Roberts WA which is part of the US but whose only road access in or out is through British Columbia and relies on utility service from Tssawassen BC. Perhaps because of this Washington State politicians always seem to be a bit “nicer” to Canada than other places. I know for example on KUOW radio in Seattle they actually do a weekly Canadian politics segment with Vaughn Palmer of the Vancouver Sun. Vancouver is also located much closer to the US border than any other major Canadian city. My one observation I would make to someone in Washington State observing Canada through perspective of BC is that BC has very unique populist political culture by Canadian standards probably something much closer to that of the US compared to Alberta and East. So BC politics might not actually look as foreign to American eyes as elsewhere in Canada. (I was very happy to see the BC NDP caucus take such a strong stance on this. It was not something I would have necessarily expected from that particular group).
Our “friend” Sen Levin appears to now be investigating HSBC including HSBC Canada. Apparently a West Virginia doctor was riping off US Medicare and wiring the proceeds to an account at HSBC Canada. Not sure what anyone’s initial opinion is. I do find interesting that the US has such a problems with Medicare fraud compared to Canada which on a per capita basis has a much larger “public” health care system.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/25/us-hsbc-probe-idUSTRE80O1FH20120125
DemPerdomo,
You wrote “……the US citizenship rules are seriously out of date with the way that the modern world works. Here is a great article on Campobello, a small border town in Canada.”
The Campbellow article is really an eye-opener but are you really not aware that the US has one set of rules with repect to citizenship and taxation for itself, But the rest of the world better not follow the US example in this area? There is one set of rules for the US but another set for everyone else. All are of course equal, but the US is more equal than the others, to pharaphrase the immortal words of George Orwell in his 1945 book “Animal Farm.”
Do not rest and do not waver. This double taxation is of Satan himself, and must not be allowed to survive.
Roger, did we meet at Talk.Politics.Medicine years ago?
Markpinetree,
Not that I recall. I lived in Brazil 1970-1977, in both Rio and Sao Paulo, moving to Miami that year. For the next 30 years I visited Brazil regulary, but was always involved in Telecomunications. Please refresh my memory
@Roger Conklin
I was referring exclusively to the process of granting citizenship by birth, regardless of the status of the parents as landed immigrants or not. Even without the taxation issue the US is way out of line with regards to how it grants citizenship. Notice that jus solis citizenship is almost exclusively found only in the Americas:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jus_soli_world.png
I was born in the US to European parents who were completing post-graduate work there. We moved back to Europe when I was 1 year old and then moved back to the US when I was in my teens when my fathe’s company transferred him for a few years. We nearly had a heart attack when the US embassy rejected my visa application because they said I was a citizen. Not only did we have no idea that I was a citizen, but at the time of my birth both of my parents’ countries strictly forbade dual citizenship so we thought I would be in for a ton of legal trouble (it had been hard enough to retain both Belgian and Italian citizenship and I didn’t need a third one to deal with as well!). I oppose automatic citizenship without consent, which I know that, for the above reasons, my parents would not have consented to me having.
I find jus solis citizenship laws to be out of whack with how the modern world works. I think that people should be eligible for citizenship in a country if they are born to landed immigrants and/or reside there until their 10th birthday, after which time they can register as a citizen. I believe that the UK follows this model, for example. Ireland was the last EU country to do away with “birthright” citizenship and with it went a last bastion of “birth tourism” in the EU.
Canadians – How does citizenship operate in Canada? I know that it is jus solis like the US, but is it also automatic upon the day of birth regardless of the immigration status of the parents?
@Dompomidoro,
There is absolutely no uniformity of citizenship laws. Birth within US territory makes the person a US citizen. That is engraved in stone in the US consistitution and although the constitution can be amended it is a very slow process that requires not only action in Washington but it has to be ratified by the individual states and that is a process that when it has been done in the past takes years, so since I am 80 I would never expect to see the criteria for US by birth changed during my lifetime and likely during the lifetime of perhaps all posters on this blog. There are rumbles about this constitutional provision because pregnant women are well known to enter the US illegally solely for the purpose of giving birth in the US so the child will be a US citizen. Such a child is referred to as an Anchor Baby, since being a US citizen signifies that when the child becomes an adult with US citizenship greatly simplifies the process for near foreign relatives like parents and siblings to obtain visas to immigrate legally to the US. It is also very common for foreign women to come legally from visa waver countries (from which the US does not require visas to enter as tourists or on business), or to obtain a visa to enter the US for medical care (i.e. to give birth). One well known case in this category is former US Ambassador to the UN, former governor of the state of New Mexico and an early Democratic candidate in the early primary elections in 2008, His parents were not US citizens. His mother was Spanish. I have forgotten his father’s nationality, but they were residents of Mexico. She came to the US for the specific purpose giving birth to Bill. They both then returned to Mexico where he was raised. When he was a teenager, with US citizenship, he came to the US to attend and graduate from high school and the university. He stayed. This is a classic success case of a person of foreign parentage who has risen to occupy very high positions in government and, had his bid for nomination as a presidential candidate succeeded could very well have become president of the US.
The US also grants citizenship at birth to persons born to a US parent outside of the US. There are some strings attached to this, however. There is also a requirement that the US citizen parent must have lived in the US for a certain minimum number of years in order to transmt US citizenship to a child born abroad, and in the case of an illigitimate birth abroad to a US citizen father, there is a requirement that the father must produce a signed agreement to have supported that child from birth to a certain age in order to confirm transmission of his US citizenship. I have a US citizen friend resident in Brazil who has 3 children born to a common law wife who is in the process with the US consulate of obtaining their confirmation of US citizenship. With what is going on today I have cautioned him that unless they intend to live and work in the US he would be well-advised to “let sleeping dogs alone” because of the US tax liabilities they will incur if they remain in Brazil.
The number of years of residence in the US in order to transmit US ciizenship to a child born abroad has been changed up and down several times by legislation and it depends on when the person in this situation was born abroad as to whether or not such a person has US citizenship.
Mexico, Argentina and Brazil are countries granting citizenship to persons born there. I presume there is a published list of rules for citizenship for all countries availibale on the net.
When we lived in Brazil in 1970s there was one very newsworthy case of unwanted and unexpected birth that was most unusual. At that time Brazil was in a deep financial crisis and to restrict the outflow of dollars by Brazilian tourists going abroad it instituted a compulsory deposit requirement for all residents of Brazil traveling outside of the country. At that time residents, with pasport and air ticket in hand were permitted to obtain up to $1000 at a bank per person when traveling abroad (it was limited to $100 for travel to an adjacent country). Dollars could be purchased onthe black market at a premium over the official exchange rate but this was illegal and those found leaving the country with more than the legal amont had better have a good explanation of where they got them, or they could have them confiscated and end up in prison. The controls were strict. This was the normal allowance that had existed for years. But to cut back on this outflow of dollars the government instituted a “compulsory deposit” in Brazilian currency that had to be made equivalent to US $1,000 per person which was refundable, without interest, one year after the traveler returned to Brazil. This applied to all Brazilians and foreigners resident in Brazil, and you could not board an international flight or leave the country at a land border crossing without a receipt for this deposit. On an Aereolineas Argentina flight between Argentina and North America an Argentine woman gave emergency birth to a baby. The flight made an emergency landing in Brazil and mother and baby were rushed to a hospital and all went well. But when the baby was well enough the mother obtained an Argentine passport from its consulate in Brazil, but because the baby had been born in airspace over Brazil, it was under Brazilian law a Brazilian citizen and therefore subjected to the compulsory deposit requrement which would likely never be refunded because the baby would probably never return to Brazil. It resulted in a diplomatic crisis between Argentina and Brazil which was resolved with specific legislation permitting this one specific dual-citizen baby to leave without payment of the compulsory deposit.
In countries that do not allow dual citizenship this does not annul the person’s dual citizenship in the eyes of the other country if it permits dual citizenship, so it depends on where the person is at any given moment in time as to whether or not his dual citizenship is recognized.
@Roger Conklin
Thank you for your detailed post. I think I just simply “don’t get it”. Our citizenship laws here are so different from the US that it just doesn’t make any sense to me to have such laws on the books in the 21st century. They made perfect sense 150 years ago in order to ensure that officials could not discriminate between who was and was not a citizen in the US, but nowadays they just lead to the absurd situations that you mention above. I am referring to jus solis citizenship in general and not just in the US. Jus solis citizenship should only be automatic for those who would otherwise be stateless. I agree with you though, changing something so enshrined in the US constitution would take such a huge amount of political capital that it will probably never happen.
On the other side of the equation though I think that extremely rigid jus sanguinis citizenship laws can be just as troublesome. Here in Belgium there are some whose last connection to Morocco are there grand parents or even further back, and they have told me that Morocco doesn’t allow renunciations and that they won’t register non-Islamic names in passports (which has been an issue for some here who want to have French or Dutch first names or maybe a combination of Islamic and the two). Citizenship is passed on forever, no matter how many generations back the last native born Moroccan was. Until 2008 (when Belgium started to allow dual citizenship), we had many third generations born in Belgium who could never naturalise, similar to your example on another page about citizens of Argentina probably never being able to naturalise in Germany. I guess the moral of the story is that every country’s citizenship laws are imperfect, some more so than others.
Your Brazil example reminded me of another country where I imagine that it is essentially impossible to legally reside as a US citizen or dual: Venezuela. Some of you have probably heard already, but Chavez’s daughter posted a picture of herself which a wad of dollars recently, which has provoked a strong reaction from those living in Venezuela, since remittances in dollars are capped at 3,000 dollars per year and in order to get access to more you essentially have to buy them on the black market.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/26/chavez-daughter-instagram-picture-dollars?newsfeed=true
I can speak some about Brazil (sorry to intrude because it seems that this blog is more concerned about Canada. But here we are clear. Brazilians living and earning money abroad do pay Income Tax to Brazil. That is Brazilians living in the USA with green card of dual citizens don´t pay income tax to Brazil. But Brazilians who live and work in Brazil, pay income tax to Brazil and if they have investments in other countries will pay tax after getting credit to what they pay in the other Country, I keep imagining now how Brazil is going to react to the USA FATCA in terms of reciprocity. Is Brazil going after Brazilians living and working in the USA the same way? Will the USA Banks agree to send to Brazil information on all bank accounts of Brazilians living and working in the USA? Curious. Changing the subject what concerns me is the penalties being applied to Americans Living Abroad who did not know about FBARS, Even when promising amnesty… That is unfair. Very unfair.
@Markpinetree: we are thanks to you and others truly an international site. So we really appreciate our international participants and very much welcome your input.
Markpinetree,
As far as I know Brazil does not, and has no plans that I have heard of, to tax Brazilians who bona fide residents of the US or any other foreign country. It does, however, subject the foreign income of those who are resident in Brazil to Brazilian tax. Indeed I see from the Receta Federal website that residents of Brazil can claim a foreign tax credit against their Brazilian tax obligation for taxes paid to the foreign government on such income.
That’s an improvement over what it was when I lived in Brazil. Back then such foreign income was taxable, but you were not allowed to claim a foreign tax credit for foreign taxes on that income. The instructions back then did not so state, but I learned from friends whose tax returns were audited would accept taxing the foreign income less the foreign tax you had paid. Not as good as a tax credit, but better than nothing.
When I lived in Brazil it was common for US expats in Brazil to receive part of their pay in Brazil and part of it was paid in US dollars deposited in your bank account abroad. Tax authorities were vigilant to make sure that you declared and paid Brazilian tax on the US paid portion. The US company I worked for when I first arrived in Brazil in 1970 has a significant number of US expatriates whose payment arrangement was like this. One of them was called in and confronted with evidence that Receta Federal had with respect to salary deposits abroad that he had not included on his Brazilian tax return. They had the evidence in hand. He was subjected to stiff fines and penalties. As a result of this all of the rest of us expats were called in and warned that if we had not declared the US portion of ou compensation in Brazil, we were instucted to do it immediately and provide the company with evidence that we were totally in compliance with Braziian tax laws. The negative publicity resulting from that one person’s failure to have done so was published in O Globo and Journal do Brasil and this of course reflected negagtively on the company. They insisted we be squeaky clean as far as our taxes were concrned.