53 thoughts on “Letter from Consulate General July 25, 1980”
@renounceuscitizenship
I plan on doing all of the above re what I carry with me if crossing the border. I will also use the same “proof” if needed with my financial institution.
I have written to the Access to Information and Privacy Commissioner and requested my citizenship file which should have my signature on both the Oath of Allegiance to the Queen and also the Oath renouncing prior allegiance to a foreign state. I certainly hope you are correct that all of this will “work itself out fairly quickly”.
Re http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/109065.pdf: 7 FAM 1211 (d)–(f) deal with a “preponderance of evidence” standard which is lower than two other standards of evidence, and then list four distinct elements that must be established under (f). The first two are objective. The second two amount to say-so: What is/was your will? What is/was your intent?
If you were a US consular officer etc, would you not prefer to avoid this utter hell of fuzzy distinctions by forcing as many comers as possible to renounce?
Renunciation (1) saves them much ponderous analysis (2) does nothing but displace your very same say-so to a handy form executed in the present. Not to mention (3) that sweet sweet fee of $450.
To make this nasty racket even more insane: To renounce, in practice if not in book law, you already have to have performed what used to be the simple expatriating act.
Current normal processing time to acquire Canadian citizenship is 19 months. Current normal processing time to lose United States citizenship is classified information.
Yossarian would feel right at home. He would immediately see that this is what so many have fought and died for – and then do his durndest never to fly another mission. Our totem book is Catch-22.
Pierre Trudeau (Remember him?) compared Canada living next to USA to a Mouse sleeping next to an Elephant. “No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”
The Elephant may be bigger and stronger, but the Mouse is smaller, smarter and faster.
Even Pierre didn’t know about tiny Ladybug. While the beastly Elephant was snoozing and Mice were scurrying around, Ladybug and Mr. Ladybug quietly and discretely bugged their lives, seeking a remedy to keep the Elephant from stomping on all the Mice of a certain era.
When she found the antidote, Ladybug gently crawled onto the Mouse’s face and said “Here’s a sleeping pill for the Elephant.”
My husband told me that his mother had wanted him and his brother to become Canadian citizens in 1980 before they turned 18 because that was around the time that Reagan came to power and she was concerned her two young boys might be drafted (although the US never ended up having a draft). The whole point of becoming Canadian citizens was to lose US citizenship.
She had one much older son go off to war during the Vietnam era and she didn’t want to go through that again. She lived an interesting life having 2 sets of children about 28 years apart. She didn’t want her younger boys to ever see war.
When she was 17 she ran away from home during World War II and joined Wayne and Schuster doing the army show. She saw horrific things.
@OMG: I continue to beinated by your stories. It sounds like your mother in law was (to use Arrow’s term) a “spiritual draft dodger.” So were many of the women of our era on here.
@Everyone: It looks like to Consulate may not make getting information about our records easy. I sent an e-mail to the Vancouver consulate asking simply if they retained the records from 1973 (no specific request about myself or anyone else.) for Americans who relinquished their citizenship in that year.
This is the curt reply I received: ” We are unable to provide such information which is protected by the Privacy Act.”
I’ve gone back with further clarification of my simple request. Maybe Canadian privacy laws are different than American (Surprise, Surprise!), but in Canada, privacy laws and access to information laws allow you to access certain records about yourself.
@ Blaze
Well, I am happy to hear they answer their emails. But Privacy Act – all they had to do was answer the question “did they retain the records from 1973”. If answer is yes, then I am sure you would be more than happy to prove who you are and that you have a right to access your own records.
@Blaze, yes my mother in law was a “spiritual draft dodger” and the world’s first “cougar”. Her second marriage was to a man 15 years her junior. He was 23 and she was 38 when they got married. To make matters worse, he was the friend her older son brought home. That marriage didn’t end well but it produced 2 children, one of them my husband.
@OMG: Well, you certainly have reason to rejoice in your mother in law being a cougar. Why is it always OK for older men and younger women, but when it’s the other way around, many people are outraged.
You continue to fascinate me. Hope we can meet sometime and swap stories–maybe enough for a book or movie!
That would be nice Blaze. I live in Cambridge, Ontario. We can at least talk on the phone. I haven’t figured out the other message board this one is connected to although I do have a login. Maybe later when I have time I can figure out how to do the private messaging. I’m off to Amish country to have dinner. See you later.
omg: I live about an hour west of you. I have given so much personal information about myself in various comments that anyone who knows me has figured out who I am by now!
I love Amish outings. Originally from Pennsylvania (there I go again with more personal info!), respect for the Amish is in my genes.
Blaze, keep us posted on your dealings with the Vancouver Consulate. I know someone who tried numerous times to phone there but never got an answer. Guess they only deal via email now.
I’ve found all this to quite interesting. Just to be clear, if I became a Canadian and took the Oath in Oct of 1980, I’m out of the US but if I filed tax forms through the 2011 OVDI I’m back in the US, doh!!
It doesn’t matter. March 7th I’ll be at the Consulate in Calgary renouncing anyway.
See this is how greedy cross border accounting firms have made matters worse for expats who were already out of the IRS’s reach because of the fact that they had lost their US citizenship by becoming Canadians before the US allowed dual citizenship in 1986.
The journalists writing articles in the early days of FATCA were no better, they basically took what were advertisements by accounting firms and printed them as news articles.
By submitting tax returns to the IRS a former US citizen is now a citizen again all because some accounting firm wanted to make a few bucks and the journalists were too lazy to properly research changing US citizenship laws.
Actually it was a local firm in Calgary. The main tax lawyers are American citizens. I’m assuming the firm saw an opportunity to expand their business plan and hired some high-rollers. Interestingly they both claimed to be Libertarians…
Somebody should send the information we’ve uncovered about loss of US citizenship by those who became Canadians before 1986 to that Canadian news reporter who is always writing articles about coming clean to the IRS.
Instead of calling honest Canadians tax evaders, maybe it’s time he offered an apology in the same forum he used to label us.
Maybe he could also do an article about folks who are now in the crosshairs of the IRS thanks to accounting firms and journalists like him spreading the IRS message of fear.
@itacaf: Are you going to renounce or relinquish when you go to Consulate? If relinquishing is an option for you, it’s easier and cheaper (No Fee!) and requires only one appointment.
@Ladybug: I will let you know if I hear anything further from Vancouver Consulate. I’m not optimistic. Someone posted in another thread that another woman had to discard her lipstick before she could go into Vancouver Consulate! I think it just applies to lipstick in the tube and not on the lips Unless maybe if you’re planning to kiss someone there (Yuk!)
Ladybug, you have given us so much help with your posts and your husband’s letter. Is there any help we can give to you? You said your situation was different than your husband’s, but we don’t know what your situation is.
At this point it’s probably best to say ‘renounce’. Although, in my statement that I’m getting ready to send in prior to my meeting, I do make it clear that I took the Oath to Canada and Queen Elizabeth II in Oct of 1980.
The $450 is nothing compared to the cost of the OVDI. Unless your referring to the 8854.
I too have tried to phone the Vancouver Consulate. It appears that the only way you can talk to a human is if:
a) your life is in danger
b) you’ve been arrested
Their website is no great shakes either. This is where (if you happen to be American) you’re supposed to go for help? I’m not looking forward to paying them a visit – which I will have to travel 400 miles to do.
@hijacked: Don’t take lipstick when you go. They won’t let you in. And, you thought it was just the phones that were the problem.
The US consulate should change their voicemail to say you can talk to a human if:
a) your life is in danger
b) you’ve been arrested
c) you’d like a backdated CLN so you can get back to living your life
Since a) and b) are highly unlikely in Canada, most people will choose c) but then the consulate would have to hire additional staff and that costs money. Maybe the White House will get smart and do what Flaherty requested, leave us Canadians the hell alone.
Blaze, I love the elephant and mouse reference. I’m glad I get to be a sneaky little ladybug rather than the pack rat you could have cast me as since we hid that letter from ourselves for over 30 years in a mass of other papers
.
You asked about my story. I’ll send it soon.
@blaze Thanks Blaze, for your kind words and offer of help. Truly, I’ve already been getting a big emotional boost just from reading all the posts on IBS and realizing that I’m not alone. My situation is pretty typical of many of you, I think. We came here in 1975 as landed immigrants with our children and it didn’t take long to realize that Canada was truly our home.
As you know, Mr. LB became a Canadian citizen in 1979, relinquishing his U.S. citizenship. I, on the other hand, continued to keep my U.S. citizenship when I became a Canadian citizen in 2002. I had no intention of relinquishing U.S. citizenship right away, because my elderly parents were still alive and I wanted to be sure that there would be no problem going down to be with them when they needed me, not to mention just to visit them. I know that many on this site have this same issue.
When it came time to renew my U.S. passport after I’d become a dual citizen, I did call the U.S. consulate to ask questions about renouncing and found that the person I talked to didn’t seem to have many definitive answers, perhaps she just didn’t know as it probably was not very common then. Therefore, feeling the pull of family ties, I went ahead and renewed my U.S. passport for freedom of movement across the border. Also, at that time, other than the inconvenience of having to use two passports when I travelled and the annoyance and cost of having to pay someone to do my U.S. tax returns each year just to show that I didn’t owe anything, it didn’t seem like a big deal.
My parents have both passed away since then and so I had thought that before time to renew my U.S. passport again I would likely renounce to simplify my life as I now identify totally as a Canadian. Little did I know what an ordeal it would be to start simplifying until I began to read news reports last August about the IRS crackdown on U.S. tax cheats. At first, even though I felt sorry for those poor souls who were innocently getting caught in the net, I was feeling pretty smug about my own situation because I had been filing my U.S. tax returns for all of the years I had been here. Then I began to notice that when I read about FBAR filings in these articles it was talking about all U.S. tax filers with accounts totaling over $10,000, not just people who hadn’t been filing returns. Suddenly “them” was “me” and I realized I was not in compliance with the FBAR regulation because I had never heard of it. Apparently neither had the two accountants that I had used over the past 10 years. All of a sudden I felt very vulnerable and the stress set in.
In Sept., 2011, I sent in a FBAR form for 2010 and then in Dec. when I read the IRS update that they expected FBAR filings for the past six years from people who had not filed I started scurrying around to compile that information. (Yes, I’m a stickler for following rules. I didn’t even chew gum in school.) What a job to try to find all that old information! While doing that I read that tax preparers who do U.S. taxes must have a PIN, pass a test, and pay a fee, so I decided I was going to have to get a cross-border accountant with those qualifications. Then, when I was about to send off my FBAR filings in Jan. I learned about FBAR’s evil twin the FATCA 8938 Form. I looked at it online and thought there’s no way I can figure out how to file this form. So later in January I found a knowledgeable cross-border accountant who is going to look after my tax account and knowing that helps me to sleep a little better at night.
So, right now I am accumulating all my tax info for 2011 returns and when the U.S. return is sent in, I plan to take the next step and contact the consulate for an appointment to renounce. I believe I’m in the same boat as many of you in that I had a wonderful, happy life growing up in the U.S. and certainly did not anticipate that someday I would feel the need to relinquish my citizenship. However, my loyalties now belong totally to Canada where I expect to spend the rest of my life. Being one of Ambassador Jacobson’s 70-year-old grandmas (I’ll bet he wishes he’d never spoken those words!), I just want to live a normal life enjoying my family and friends as I was doing before August 2011. Even though I have no tax issues, I have no idea whether I will have outlandish fines for not filing a form I was not aware of or if the IRS will do the right thing and send me a letter saying “go and sin no more” but in any case I just want my life back.
Thanks to all of you for providing your stories and your valuable information and your support for each other. I know it means a lot to everyone who is trying their best to work through this unbelievable scenario we find ourselves in.
@omghe’sstillanamerican
I am not terribly optimistic that anyone will get a CLN in any reasonable length of time. There are people who formally renounced over a year ago and still don’t have one. Nor would I want to bet my life that one would always get approved on the first try without a lawyers involvement. The State Department has no real incentitive to speed up the process unless you are prepared to go into court in the US and sue them. Its an angle I would definately try but not to the detriment of continuing to put pressure on Flaherty and your MP etc(Continuing to put pressure on the Canadian government is far cheaper than hiring a US immigration lawyer).
@Ladybug: You’re right, I think the Ambassador wishes he’d never said those words. The Grandmas all have a loud and clear message for him: “Don’t mess with Grandma!”
How incredibly complicated your situation is. It must be very trying, so that makes me all the more appreciative that you reached out to us to tell us about Mr. LB.
I’m cross-posting the following from the class-action thread, because it’s too important to get buried there.
Usxcanada very helpfully pointed out (March 4 post in class action thread at 9:52pm) the importance of the 1986 date for those claiming relinquishment by having become Canadian (or any other non-US) citizens prior to 1986.
The State Department Consular Affairs Manual chapter at this link http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/109065.pdf
says on page 7-8 (under 7 FAM 1214 b(4)) that Section 349(a) of 8 USC 1481 was amended in 1986 to add the words “voluntarily performing any of the following acts with the intention of relinquishing United States nationality:” after “shall lose his nationality by”
What this means is that, prior to 1986, Section 349 (a) began by saying “A person who is a national of the United States whether by birth or naturalization, shall lose his nationality by
1. obtaining naturalization in a foreign state …”
In other words, under the law prior to 1986, you did in fact automatically lose your US nationality by becoming a foreign citizen on your own application after attaining the age of 18 years. Prior to 1986, volition and intent to relinquish wasn’t mentioned in the law at all – you did this, you lost your US citizenship. Though State did send out letters (if they found out you’d become a foreign citizen, however they might have found that out) to give you a chance to argue your way out of losing your US citizenship if you wanted to take that chance, the letters made it clear the argument would have to be pretty compelling and supported by evidence. If you didn’t reply to the letter within a specified period of time, they issued you a CLN.
Quite apart from the letter that Ladybug kindly provided to us on this website (see July 25 1980 letter thread), this reference in State’s own procedures manual confirms that loss of US citizenship was automatic if you took out foreign citizenship before 1986, unless you provided to State a compelling argument against losing your nationality. Though obviously before 1986, and even today, taking out foreign citizenship voluntarily and with intent to relinquish US citizenship will always cause you to get a CLN. However, today you need to swear volition and intent and provide some sort of substantiating argument. Then, you didn’t, and I believe legally that if you took out foreign citizenship before 1986 they pretty-much have to issue you a CLN if you ask for it, as long as you’ve done nothing since then to exercise or assert US citizenship (get a US passport, vote in US election, FILE TAX RETURNS TO THE IRS, etc.) You shouldn’t even have to argue volition and intent, though it won’t hurt to do so and you might as well do so.
This reference is important, because on the internet you won’t find the pre-1986 law posted, what you’ll find is the current version. At least I haven’t been able to find a posting of the pre-1986 law. So don’t lose this reference, if you did become Canadian (or other nationality) before 1986, and State gives you any grief at all when you apply for a CLN today. They have absolutely no choice but to issue you a CLN if you ask for it, and it has to be dated from the day you took out foreign citizenship.
This State Department Consular Affairs Manual chapter reinforces what was said in the July 25 1980 letter posted at the top of this thread, and the memories we all have from back then that by becoming Canadian we NO LONGER WERE NOR ARE AMERICAN.
Just DON’T file anything with the IRS, get your CLN first, then talk to a good cross-border tax lawyer about whether, what and how you need to say anything to IRS thereafter. But don’t even think of filing anything until you get the CLN, if ever — filing tax returns to IRS is in itself an assertion or admission that you’re an American. And that certainly is how it’s interpreted under Question 13 on State’s Form 4079.
@renounceuscitizenship
I plan on doing all of the above re what I carry with me if crossing the border. I will also use the same “proof” if needed with my financial institution.
I have written to the Access to Information and Privacy Commissioner and requested my citizenship file which should have my signature on both the Oath of Allegiance to the Queen and also the Oath renouncing prior allegiance to a foreign state. I certainly hope you are correct that all of this will “work itself out fairly quickly”.
Re http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/109065.pdf: 7 FAM 1211 (d)–(f) deal with a “preponderance of evidence” standard which is lower than two other standards of evidence, and then list four distinct elements that must be established under (f). The first two are objective. The second two amount to say-so: What is/was your will? What is/was your intent?
If you were a US consular officer etc, would you not prefer to avoid this utter hell of fuzzy distinctions by forcing as many comers as possible to renounce?
Renunciation (1) saves them much ponderous analysis (2) does nothing but displace your very same say-so to a handy form executed in the present. Not to mention (3) that sweet sweet fee of $450.
To make this nasty racket even more insane: To renounce, in practice if not in book law, you already have to have performed what used to be the simple expatriating act.
Current normal processing time to acquire Canadian citizenship is 19 months. Current normal processing time to lose United States citizenship is classified information.
Yossarian would feel right at home. He would immediately see that this is what so many have fought and died for – and then do his durndest never to fly another mission. Our totem book is Catch-22.
Pierre Trudeau (Remember him?) compared Canada living next to USA to a Mouse sleeping next to an Elephant. “No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”
The Elephant may be bigger and stronger, but the Mouse is smaller, smarter and faster.
Even Pierre didn’t know about tiny Ladybug. While the beastly Elephant was snoozing and Mice were scurrying around, Ladybug and Mr. Ladybug quietly and discretely bugged their lives, seeking a remedy to keep the Elephant from stomping on all the Mice of a certain era.
When she found the antidote, Ladybug gently crawled onto the Mouse’s face and said “Here’s a sleeping pill for the Elephant.”
My husband told me that his mother had wanted him and his brother to become Canadian citizens in 1980 before they turned 18 because that was around the time that Reagan came to power and she was concerned her two young boys might be drafted (although the US never ended up having a draft). The whole point of becoming Canadian citizens was to lose US citizenship.
She had one much older son go off to war during the Vietnam era and she didn’t want to go through that again. She lived an interesting life having 2 sets of children about 28 years apart. She didn’t want her younger boys to ever see war.
When she was 17 she ran away from home during World War II and joined Wayne and Schuster doing the army show. She saw horrific things.
@OMG: I continue to beinated by your stories. It sounds like your mother in law was (to use Arrow’s term) a “spiritual draft dodger.” So were many of the women of our era on here.
@Everyone: It looks like to Consulate may not make getting information about our records easy. I sent an e-mail to the Vancouver consulate asking simply if they retained the records from 1973 (no specific request about myself or anyone else.) for Americans who relinquished their citizenship in that year.
This is the curt reply I received: ” We are unable to provide such information which is protected by the Privacy Act.”
I’ve gone back with further clarification of my simple request. Maybe Canadian privacy laws are different than American (Surprise, Surprise!), but in Canada, privacy laws and access to information laws allow you to access certain records about yourself.
@ Blaze
Well, I am happy to hear they answer their emails. But Privacy Act – all they had to do was answer the question “did they retain the records from 1973”. If answer is yes, then I am sure you would be more than happy to prove who you are and that you have a right to access your own records.
@Blaze, yes my mother in law was a “spiritual draft dodger” and the world’s first “cougar”. Her second marriage was to a man 15 years her junior. He was 23 and she was 38 when they got married. To make matters worse, he was the friend her older son brought home. That marriage didn’t end well but it produced 2 children, one of them my husband.
@OMG: Well, you certainly have reason to rejoice in your mother in law being a cougar. Why is it always OK for older men and younger women, but when it’s the other way around, many people are outraged.
You continue to fascinate me. Hope we can meet sometime and swap stories–maybe enough for a book or movie!
That would be nice Blaze. I live in Cambridge, Ontario. We can at least talk on the phone. I haven’t figured out the other message board this one is connected to although I do have a login. Maybe later when I have time I can figure out how to do the private messaging. I’m off to Amish country to have dinner. See you later.
omg: I live about an hour west of you. I have given so much personal information about myself in various comments that anyone who knows me has figured out who I am by now!
I love Amish outings. Originally from Pennsylvania (there I go again with more personal info!), respect for the Amish is in my genes.
Blaze, keep us posted on your dealings with the Vancouver Consulate. I know someone who tried numerous times to phone there but never got an answer. Guess they only deal via email now.
I’ve found all this to quite interesting. Just to be clear, if I became a Canadian and took the Oath in Oct of 1980, I’m out of the US but if I filed tax forms through the 2011 OVDI I’m back in the US, doh!!
It doesn’t matter. March 7th I’ll be at the Consulate in Calgary renouncing anyway.
See this is how greedy cross border accounting firms have made matters worse for expats who were already out of the IRS’s reach because of the fact that they had lost their US citizenship by becoming Canadians before the US allowed dual citizenship in 1986.
The journalists writing articles in the early days of FATCA were no better, they basically took what were advertisements by accounting firms and printed them as news articles.
By submitting tax returns to the IRS a former US citizen is now a citizen again all because some accounting firm wanted to make a few bucks and the journalists were too lazy to properly research changing US citizenship laws.
Actually it was a local firm in Calgary. The main tax lawyers are American citizens. I’m assuming the firm saw an opportunity to expand their business plan and hired some high-rollers. Interestingly they both claimed to be Libertarians…
Somebody should send the information we’ve uncovered about loss of US citizenship by those who became Canadians before 1986 to that Canadian news reporter who is always writing articles about coming clean to the IRS.
Instead of calling honest Canadians tax evaders, maybe it’s time he offered an apology in the same forum he used to label us.
Maybe he could also do an article about folks who are now in the crosshairs of the IRS thanks to accounting firms and journalists like him spreading the IRS message of fear.
@itacaf: Are you going to renounce or relinquish when you go to Consulate? If relinquishing is an option for you, it’s easier and cheaper (No Fee!) and requires only one appointment.
@Ladybug: I will let you know if I hear anything further from Vancouver Consulate. I’m not optimistic. Someone posted in another thread that another woman had to discard her lipstick before she could go into Vancouver Consulate! I think it just applies to lipstick in the tube and not on the lips Unless maybe if you’re planning to kiss someone there (Yuk!)
Ladybug, you have given us so much help with your posts and your husband’s letter. Is there any help we can give to you? You said your situation was different than your husband’s, but we don’t know what your situation is.
At this point it’s probably best to say ‘renounce’. Although, in my statement that I’m getting ready to send in prior to my meeting, I do make it clear that I took the Oath to Canada and Queen Elizabeth II in Oct of 1980.
The $450 is nothing compared to the cost of the OVDI. Unless your referring to the 8854.
I too have tried to phone the Vancouver Consulate. It appears that the only way you can talk to a human is if:
a) your life is in danger
b) you’ve been arrested
Their website is no great shakes either. This is where (if you happen to be American) you’re supposed to go for help? I’m not looking forward to paying them a visit – which I will have to travel 400 miles to do.
@hijacked: Don’t take lipstick when you go. They won’t let you in. And, you thought it was just the phones that were the problem.
The US consulate should change their voicemail to say you can talk to a human if:
a) your life is in danger
b) you’ve been arrested
c) you’d like a backdated CLN so you can get back to living your life
Since a) and b) are highly unlikely in Canada, most people will choose c) but then the consulate would have to hire additional staff and that costs money. Maybe the White House will get smart and do what Flaherty requested, leave us Canadians the hell alone.
Blaze, I love the elephant and mouse reference. I’m glad I get to be a sneaky little ladybug rather than the pack rat you could have cast me as since we hid that letter from ourselves for over 30 years in a mass of other papers
.
You asked about my story. I’ll send it soon.
@blaze Thanks Blaze, for your kind words and offer of help. Truly, I’ve already been getting a big emotional boost just from reading all the posts on IBS and realizing that I’m not alone. My situation is pretty typical of many of you, I think. We came here in 1975 as landed immigrants with our children and it didn’t take long to realize that Canada was truly our home.
As you know, Mr. LB became a Canadian citizen in 1979, relinquishing his U.S. citizenship. I, on the other hand, continued to keep my U.S. citizenship when I became a Canadian citizen in 2002. I had no intention of relinquishing U.S. citizenship right away, because my elderly parents were still alive and I wanted to be sure that there would be no problem going down to be with them when they needed me, not to mention just to visit them. I know that many on this site have this same issue.
When it came time to renew my U.S. passport after I’d become a dual citizen, I did call the U.S. consulate to ask questions about renouncing and found that the person I talked to didn’t seem to have many definitive answers, perhaps she just didn’t know as it probably was not very common then. Therefore, feeling the pull of family ties, I went ahead and renewed my U.S. passport for freedom of movement across the border. Also, at that time, other than the inconvenience of having to use two passports when I travelled and the annoyance and cost of having to pay someone to do my U.S. tax returns each year just to show that I didn’t owe anything, it didn’t seem like a big deal.
My parents have both passed away since then and so I had thought that before time to renew my U.S. passport again I would likely renounce to simplify my life as I now identify totally as a Canadian. Little did I know what an ordeal it would be to start simplifying until I began to read news reports last August about the IRS crackdown on U.S. tax cheats. At first, even though I felt sorry for those poor souls who were innocently getting caught in the net, I was feeling pretty smug about my own situation because I had been filing my U.S. tax returns for all of the years I had been here. Then I began to notice that when I read about FBAR filings in these articles it was talking about all U.S. tax filers with accounts totaling over $10,000, not just people who hadn’t been filing returns. Suddenly “them” was “me” and I realized I was not in compliance with the FBAR regulation because I had never heard of it. Apparently neither had the two accountants that I had used over the past 10 years. All of a sudden I felt very vulnerable and the stress set in.
In Sept., 2011, I sent in a FBAR form for 2010 and then in Dec. when I read the IRS update that they expected FBAR filings for the past six years from people who had not filed I started scurrying around to compile that information. (Yes, I’m a stickler for following rules. I didn’t even chew gum in school.) What a job to try to find all that old information! While doing that I read that tax preparers who do U.S. taxes must have a PIN, pass a test, and pay a fee, so I decided I was going to have to get a cross-border accountant with those qualifications. Then, when I was about to send off my FBAR filings in Jan. I learned about FBAR’s evil twin the FATCA 8938 Form. I looked at it online and thought there’s no way I can figure out how to file this form. So later in January I found a knowledgeable cross-border accountant who is going to look after my tax account and knowing that helps me to sleep a little better at night.
So, right now I am accumulating all my tax info for 2011 returns and when the U.S. return is sent in, I plan to take the next step and contact the consulate for an appointment to renounce. I believe I’m in the same boat as many of you in that I had a wonderful, happy life growing up in the U.S. and certainly did not anticipate that someday I would feel the need to relinquish my citizenship. However, my loyalties now belong totally to Canada where I expect to spend the rest of my life. Being one of Ambassador Jacobson’s 70-year-old grandmas (I’ll bet he wishes he’d never spoken those words!), I just want to live a normal life enjoying my family and friends as I was doing before August 2011. Even though I have no tax issues, I have no idea whether I will have outlandish fines for not filing a form I was not aware of or if the IRS will do the right thing and send me a letter saying “go and sin no more” but in any case I just want my life back.
Thanks to all of you for providing your stories and your valuable information and your support for each other. I know it means a lot to everyone who is trying their best to work through this unbelievable scenario we find ourselves in.
@omghe’sstillanamerican
I am not terribly optimistic that anyone will get a CLN in any reasonable length of time. There are people who formally renounced over a year ago and still don’t have one. Nor would I want to bet my life that one would always get approved on the first try without a lawyers involvement. The State Department has no real incentitive to speed up the process unless you are prepared to go into court in the US and sue them. Its an angle I would definately try but not to the detriment of continuing to put pressure on Flaherty and your MP etc(Continuing to put pressure on the Canadian government is far cheaper than hiring a US immigration lawyer).
@Ladybug: You’re right, I think the Ambassador wishes he’d never said those words. The Grandmas all have a loud and clear message for him: “Don’t mess with Grandma!”
How incredibly complicated your situation is. It must be very trying, so that makes me all the more appreciative that you reached out to us to tell us about Mr. LB.
I’m cross-posting the following from the class-action thread, because it’s too important to get buried there.
Usxcanada very helpfully pointed out (March 4 post in class action thread at 9:52pm) the importance of the 1986 date for those claiming relinquishment by having become Canadian (or any other non-US) citizens prior to 1986.
The State Department Consular Affairs Manual chapter at this link
http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/109065.pdf
says on page 7-8 (under 7 FAM 1214 b(4)) that Section 349(a) of 8 USC 1481 was amended in 1986 to add the words “voluntarily performing any of the following acts with the intention of relinquishing United States nationality:” after “shall lose his nationality by”
What this means is that, prior to 1986, Section 349 (a) began by saying “A person who is a national of the United States whether by birth or naturalization, shall lose his nationality by
1. obtaining naturalization in a foreign state …”
In other words, under the law prior to 1986, you did in fact automatically lose your US nationality by becoming a foreign citizen on your own application after attaining the age of 18 years. Prior to 1986, volition and intent to relinquish wasn’t mentioned in the law at all – you did this, you lost your US citizenship. Though State did send out letters (if they found out you’d become a foreign citizen, however they might have found that out) to give you a chance to argue your way out of losing your US citizenship if you wanted to take that chance, the letters made it clear the argument would have to be pretty compelling and supported by evidence. If you didn’t reply to the letter within a specified period of time, they issued you a CLN.
Quite apart from the letter that Ladybug kindly provided to us on this website (see July 25 1980 letter thread), this reference in State’s own procedures manual confirms that loss of US citizenship was automatic if you took out foreign citizenship before 1986, unless you provided to State a compelling argument against losing your nationality. Though obviously before 1986, and even today, taking out foreign citizenship voluntarily and with intent to relinquish US citizenship will always cause you to get a CLN. However, today you need to swear volition and intent and provide some sort of substantiating argument. Then, you didn’t, and I believe legally that if you took out foreign citizenship before 1986 they pretty-much have to issue you a CLN if you ask for it, as long as you’ve done nothing since then to exercise or assert US citizenship (get a US passport, vote in US election, FILE TAX RETURNS TO THE IRS, etc.) You shouldn’t even have to argue volition and intent, though it won’t hurt to do so and you might as well do so.
This reference is important, because on the internet you won’t find the pre-1986 law posted, what you’ll find is the current version. At least I haven’t been able to find a posting of the pre-1986 law. So don’t lose this reference, if you did become Canadian (or other nationality) before 1986, and State gives you any grief at all when you apply for a CLN today. They have absolutely no choice but to issue you a CLN if you ask for it, and it has to be dated from the day you took out foreign citizenship.
This State Department Consular Affairs Manual chapter reinforces what was said in the July 25 1980 letter posted at the top of this thread, and the memories we all have from back then that by becoming Canadian we NO LONGER WERE NOR ARE AMERICAN.
Just DON’T file anything with the IRS, get your CLN first, then talk to a good cross-border tax lawyer about whether, what and how you need to say anything to IRS thereafter. But don’t even think of filing anything until you get the CLN, if ever — filing tax returns to IRS is in itself an assertion or admission that you’re an American. And that certainly is how it’s interpreted under Question 13 on State’s Form 4079.