Interesting article in the Globe and Mail today. Amazing how the 2009 investigation into Swiss banks has destroyed the lives of law abiding U.S. citizens living outside the United States.
Interesting comment about the implementation of FATCA:
But the burden they’re putting on the world’s financial institutions dwarfs the amount of income tax the US will recover. Case in point, I work for a mutual fund company and we’ll have to disclose all US clients to the IRS. Even if we don’t have any clients we still have to report it. It’s a huge undertaking that will recover very little in the end.
This article is well written and worth a read.
It is the curse of American politicians that they always over indulge themselves when they feel that there is easy political gain to be made.
When it comes to politicians my personal axiom is that:
When faced with a crisis or pivotal moment in history you can usually rely upon the typical politician to react unintelligently and therefore in exactly the opposite way in which he/she should have reacted. In the end this only serves to prolong the crisis and therefore to make it worse.
I believe that recent American legislation clearly confirms this position.
I couldn’t find the comment about mutual funds anywhere in that article, or in the comments.
“Swiss banks has destroyed the lives of law abiding U.S. citizens living outside the United States.”
At least for me, it hasn’t *destroyed* my life, just changed it quite a bit. I thought I could always be American, but I discovered that living overseas and being American just don’t match. I can’t work under US rules, so their expectation is that we must renounce. And this is what I’m going to do.
sorry.. other article…
Do you all think that Amnesty International could help us insofar as Taxation Without Representation?
I was never terribly bothered about FBARs or filing income taxes, since not being able to visit the US is not a big deal for me if I decided it was too onerous to comply and to just ignore it. The problem is FATCA, which is removing my ability to invest and access normal banking accounts where I live even though I hold citizenship where I reside. It is restricting me professionally since my company will not allow me to operate as a signer on our accounts (even though it is in my job portfolio!). I have heard “You can’t do X, because you were born in the US” more times than I can handle and have basically broke – I can’t take it anymore and can’t wait to renounce.
I blame the actual tax dodgers in the US for this whole fiasco with FATCA and the Swiss banks. Almost all of these accounts were held by US residents actually illegally trying to hide their assets, and I blame them just as much as the loony politicians for being the cause and reasoning behind implementing FATCA.
The US is all about naming, shaming and bullying with regards to Switzerland: the UK and German authorities made a deal with the Swiss government to have a yearly tax on the lost earnings sent back out of Switzerland without revealing the account holders’ identities. That is much too subtle for the US, since such an approach wouldn’t drum up any publicity for their terror campaign against expats or allow them to hand out huge jail terms for the tax dodgers involved. Do not mistake this as sympathy for tax dodgers: I have none. This is just another example of how the US single handedly uses ham-fist diplomacy laced with threats to get its way.
I guess the one satisfying thing is that the US will only realise in 10 years’ time the damage done well after the fact: US expats being turned completely against the homeland, immigrants staying away or never naturalising and foreign capital flowing out. Brilliant.
Sorry for the late night tirade 🙂
@donpomodoro- when it comes to the penal system and an underlying theory of human behaviour the U.S. is very much in the B.F. Skinner camp of behaviourism. Where punishment and threats are the tools used for conditioning people and therefore directing them towards the behaviour that the state desires.
This method of exercising judicial control over its own populace is one that is always a favored tool of Totalitarian and Fascist regimes.