The up-to-date database resides in Part 2 (link at the bottom of this page).
Above is a link to data we are compiling on Relinquishments and Renunciations — a work in progress. This corresponds with the Consulate Report Directory (in sticky post below), tracking individual experiences for each Consulate, along with a timeline chart.
Note: We are using numbers instead of blog names for this public posting so there will be no compromise of private information. Your facts will help give a snapshot of relinquishment and renunciation activity and where that occurs.
Please submit information in the comments here (or someone can contact you privately). Thanks for all your help on this.
COMMENTS ARE CLOSED FOR Relinquishment and Renunciation Data (as reported on Isaac Brock), Part 1.
Part 2 is now open for your comments. Thank you.
Congratulations, Citizen of Europe!
Thanks for sharing with the consulate report directory and for the info about the markings on your certificate. I think your assumption is correct about the separate geographic divisions — we heard of a staff shortage in ours, which appears to have been rectified — our CLNs are starting to turn around in about 2 months now, although some are still caught in the backlog.
Glad to hear everything went smoothly for you. Enjoy your freedom!
*Well done to you AnonAnon. At least most of the US embassies in Canada seem to be getting their acts together. Now if Vancouver would just pick up the pace …
A worldwide party sounds like fun. Is it worth letting ACA know about it if it gets organised down the line? Not sure if they’d take it as good news or bad that ex-Americans are celebrating the receipt of their CLNs.
A worldwide party sounds even better, even more likely to attract media coverage. A heck of a good way to tweak Mordor’s tail in public, and not too many months before the US mid-term elections too ;-)))))
Whatever happens, in Canada we should invite MPs who have been outspoken on the issues, notably Elizabeth May and Denise Savoie (now retired from Parliament). I’ll reserve judgment on Flaherty until we know for sure about an IGA. Not sure how many acceptances we’d get, but we can always extend invitations. If there turn out to be politicians supportive of the fight against FATCA in other countries, perhaps they could be invited to any events in those countries as well …
Beginning to sound like we need a new thread for all this; IMO (just one opinion though) it’s not really appropriate to keep it in this thread, where it’s a bit off-topic and also these ideas might get hard to find or track in the shuffle as time goes on. Maybe the originator of the idea should start a separate thread about now? Or is it too soon yet? Thoughts, AnonAnon or others?
*I do feel we have to do something to organise the threads better especially as I think many people go straight to the threads and not the front page. Sometime I don’t know where to post critical information. Do people read the threads such as this one more than the front page.
@Tim I agree, threads (and not just on this site) tend to wander off-topic and get lost sometimes, but moderators such as the ones we have here are reluctant to get too ham-handed in policing things. It’s a dilemma.
FWIW I susbscribe to the Daily Digest, only look at new threads that sound interesting to me from that Digest, then I subscribe to a handful of threads (like this one) so I get copies of all posts, but only on things of strong personal interest. I rarely visit the home page, but with the digest I don’t need to. No idea what others do. I do the same at the Sandbox site, which has similar notification features as it’s also on WordPress.
*Thanks
There is a new article about Canada IGA talks and Elizabeth May on IPolitics.CA. It is paywalled(I subscribe) but I want everyone to see the following quotes.
“I continue to hold (Finance Minister Jim) Flaherty to his commitment to protect Canadians from the extra-territorial application of U.S. law,” May wrote in an email to iPolitics about the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. “FATCA is moving fast down a track that violates our rights as Canadian citizens.”
Despite the minister’s strong words, Canada and the rest of the world have little option but to sign the agreement and limit their exposure to financial punishment by the United States, said David Brown, director of the tax consulting company Navigant in Toronto. The IRS rules, released Jan 17, state that institutions and individuals who don’t provide the necessary banking information will be taxed 30 per cent on US payments. Countries who sign the agreements have less onerous terms, with the 30 per cent tax applied sparingly.
But the US “can’t show favouritism,” he said. “The IRS has had to cast a very broad global net to capture everything and everyone.”
Brown said Canada’s agreement will look nearly identical to existing ones in the UK that require arduous information searches that net personal details of US taxpayers. Taxpayers can be US citizens, Green Card holders, and permanent residents. According to Statistics Canada, there were nearly 300,000 U.S. citizens living in Canada in 2006.
Abby Deskman from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association called the scope of personal information scheduled to be handed to U.S. authorities “quite alarming,” adding that the range of people who could fall under suspicion is vast.
In a response to iPolitics, a ministry official declined to comment on the progress of negotiations but said the deal could be wrapped “in the near future.”
“The Government of Canada will continue to advocate on behalf of Canadians and Canadian financial institutions on such issues with the U.S,” the official said in an email. “As noted, we continue to work with our U.S. counterparts to develop an approach that both countries will find agreeable, with a view towards concluding an agreement in the near future.”
These just individual quotes I cut out. Article is available below to subscribers. That is where we stand right now for those who are interested.
http://www.ipolitics.ca/2013/01/30/liz-may-sounds-alarm-over-privacy-in-tax-deal-with-u-s/
*@All From Tim’s post: According to Statistics Canada, there were nearly 300,000 U.S. citizens living in Canada in 2006.
I thought the general consensus was that there is around 1 million ‘US persons’ in Canada. Who are the other 700,000 people?
According to Immigration Canada, the wait lists for getting your Canadian Citizenship from the time you apply to the time you get an appointment for the oath-taking ceremony is up to 21 months according to the CIC website. So the crux of the matter comes down to if you don’t have your Canadian Citizenship yet: “do you go ahead and apply for your Canadian Citizenship first, waiting the 21 months for the Canadian Citizenship to come through, renounce, and then comply” or “do you comply first then apply for your Canadian Citizenship while you’re waiting for the IRS to go through your tax returns all the while hoping that you don’t get penalized” or “do you do the full ostrich while waiting for your Canadian Citizenship to come through; then renounce and continue to do the full ostrich after hoping that the US government doesn’t try to come after you.”? The choices are stark and disturbing. But since my wife hasn’t got her Canadian citizenship and the fact that she is only a Canadian permanent resident, that’s the choices that she has. Still wondering what direction we should take.
WhiteKat, the 300,000 Americans are easily identifiable Americans. (permanent residents, American visitors), the other 700,000 are the silent Americans, (the duals, the children of American duals who have been conveyed US citizenship by birthright, etc. etc.) All of the above who are considered US persons by the IRS.
It wouldn’t hurt to send a thank you to Ms. May for her efforts (many Brockers already have I know). One place to do that is …
http://elizabethmaymp.ca/news/publications/backgrounder/2013/01/28/backgrounder-canada-and-fatca/
I’ve commented there as “Concerned Canadian”. I’ve also sent Ms. May e-mails which have put me on her e-mail bulletin list which I don’t mind a bit. She’s clever, articulate and a good person to have on our side but we need more just like her.
*Somehow we need to get the NDP more involved. I do worry they are drifting away from our position especially the members on the Finance Committee like Peggy Nash and Hoang Mai. I have never figured out unlike Megan Leslie, Jean Crowder, and Denise Savoie how committed Peggy Nash is to our cause.
Animal, the processing times for Canadian citizenship have an average of 21 months, which some are longer and some shorter depending on whether or not you are asked to supply more info than your original application and documents. For example, having to do a police background check and fingerprints (again since basically you had to do this when you applied for residency too) will add time.
I’ve been stuck at “received” since last July, but I only sent everything in the month before – so maybe that’s good? Who knows.
Anything could happen while your wife is waiting or nothing might happen. Here it is February and the IGA that was supposed to be a done and signed deal before xmas has yet to emerge. Maybe FATCA is a done deal but it is a deal with a whole lot of devils in its details and it won’t roll out the day after the IGA. There might be more time than you think.
*@Whitecat, As Animal has indicated, the other 700,000 are likely those who hold dual US-Canadian citizenship, and children born in Canada to US citizens and dual-national US-Canadian citizens. I don’t know, but I would presume that those classified as Canadians includes all of those who hold Canadian citizenship, without regard to the fact that, in accordance with the nationality laws of another country, they may be considered to be citizens of that other country as well. I have not seen their reports, but I would doubt that they list Canadian-Mexicans, Canadian-French, Canadian-Dutch, etc. So it would not be surprising that they do not count as US citizens those duals who hold Canadian citizenship. Under Canadian law they are Canadians. Period.
At least that is the way the US census bureau does it. Many with dual citizenship may not even know that they also hold dual citizenship in another country.
@The_Animal You may find the immigration.ca forum (http://www.immigration.ca/forum/forum_topics.asp?FID=3&title=canadian-citizenship) helpful – in some ways it’s a natural bookend of the IBS. The crowd-sourced timelines are very informative. From what I’ve seen, for simple cases of a long-term PR applying for citizenship, 21 months is very pessimistic, though the process is sluggish enough in all conscience. It’s been slowed down by a crackdown on residence fraud, and a lot of very straightforward cases have been delayed.
@WhiteKat – To add to what @The_Animal said – 1M is a very pulledoutofmyass.com estimate from the State Department of the number of people in Canada who could be considered USCs under US law. There’s no conceivable way for anybody, in or out of government, to verify this number. 300,000 is the number of people who responded to the Canadian 2006 census *saying* they were US citizens (some of whom were also Canadian citizens.)
@Roger – StatCan was asking about foreign citizenships held by residents, and also whether they held dual citizenship: Cdn-x, x-y, x-y-z, whatever it happened to be. The monster table is here:
http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2006/dp-pd/tbt/Rp-eng.cfm?LANG=E&APATH=3&DETAIL=0&DIM=0&FL=A&FREE=0&GC=0&GID=0&GK=0&GRP=1&PID=92574&PRID=0&PTYPE=88971,97154&S=0&SHOWALL=0&SUB=0&Temporal=2006&THEME=72&VID=0&VNAMEE=&VNAMEF=
And US citizens in Canada are mapped by postal code (based on the 2006 census data) here:
https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?snapid=S864301ZmrP
*Thanks for all the feedback about the CLN party idea. I agree with others that it would be a good idea to have a new thread or two for discussing ideas of parties and protests, rather than cluttering this one up further. I don’t know how to start them myself. Maybe one of the regular managers of the site can do it.
@Em
I see we’re up to 4 comments, 2 of which are yours. Maybe a few others could chip in?
@Tim
I have been Tweeting all those who have a Twitter account for quite a while now. Of course, none of them ever reply. Except Megan Leslie, who follows me. Have you already posted somewhere, the comments that have been made by Ralph Goodall, Megan Leslie and Hoang Mai?
*@A Broken Man on Halifax Pier, I can’t seem to open the links, but this is indeed much more detailed information than I would have thought possible. Having said that, it likely excludes many US-Canadian dual citizens who, having become naturalized Canadian citizens when they were naturalized many years ago, and their children born in Canada, from the dual-citizen category since they thought they had lost their US citizenship when the swore sole allegiance to the Queen. And of course their Canadian-born children had no knowledge of or reason to suspect that under US law they are also US-Canadian dual citizens. So the US-Canadian dual citizens identified in the 2006 report is likely less than the real number.
Tim & Schubert –
I do feel we have to do something to organise the threads better especially as I think many people go straight to the threads and not the front page. Sometime I don’t know where to post critical information.
I posted a recent comment about the DATATROCITIES that are being perpetrated on Brock, with a few suggestions. That stone sank immediately to the bottom of the pond. From a structural standpoint, Brock is a big mess now and can only sink further into a morass. Amusing to see all the hoopla over silencing untoward voices, when those censorious invisible moderator energies could be going into staving off an entropy that ultimately poses far greater threat. Some day an overloaded tire on the Brock bus is gonna pop.
You’re correct, usx, we do have a lot of information here since inception of this site. This is a volunteer effort and I, for one, regret we don’t meet your expectations. Would you like to organize and monitor content per your suggestions to bring it up to your standards? Do you have the time or the willingness to do so?
All your chatter about silencing untoward voices is getting tiresome. We had a lot of backing for and discussed thoroughly the very few moderations that removed comments into “Pending” (and they are still there). They did not add to the conversation or the purpose of Isaac Brock and were driving some away, the very thing none of the “censorious invisible moderators” want to happen. Isaac Brock is not here to showcase off-topic issues or conspiracy theorist rantings that are best discussed elsewhere.
Thanks, Em. I’ve added my comment for Elizabeth May.
er… as you’ve seen.
(It does look like non-retirment savings accounts like the RDSP may be addressed as an exception in the 544 pages of FATCA Regulations (but maybe not). As I told badger and the Duke of Devon, if this is the case I will thank the Canadian government and Finance Minister Flaherty for any help they provided in highlighting such accounts. It is, however, NO REASON for FATCA or for Canada to cave and sign an intergovernmental agreement.)
@ calgary411
A spoonful of sugary concessions in an IGA will not make FATCA go down any easier for me. FATCA is an abomination which needs to be abolished and then down with US citizenship-based taxation too.
**I am happy to say that I received my CLN today, 3 ½ months after the first and only appointment at the Calgary Consulate on Oct. 17, 2012. The fact that Calgary411 renounced a month later than I did and received her CLN a couple days ago had me a bit worried, but mine had to travel to BC.
Details:
Date of appointment in Calgary: Oct. 17, 2012
Approved by Overseas Citizen Services (assume this is in Washington) Dec. 28, 2012
Cover letter from Calgary Consulate: January 13, 2013
Effective date of relinquishment: January 4, 1967
Received February 1, 2013
After 18 months of conjecture, indecision and sleepless nights, to say I am relieved is an understatement. Mine was not exactly the “slam dunk” that others have been (or in Tiger’s case, should have been). I was not completely confident that my documents would be accepted but nothing was questioned in Calgary, and apparently not in Washington either.
I have tried to think of something positive that has come of this bizarre experience and a couple things come to mind. I have come to appreciate even more the fact that I grew up in Canada and I have a greater patriotism towards Canada (in the best sense of the word) than I ever did before. Secondly, the help and support of people who are essentially strangers, the “Brockers”, has been amazing. Thanks everyone.
@hijacked2012,
I am so happy for you, hijacked. I know how very worried you were throughout the process and how difficult the decision process was for you (me too!). What a wonderful feeling it must be for you.
If only I had gone to the Calgary consulate. I am jealous but in truth I am truly happy for you. Congratulations and enjoy what you have achieved.
*hijacked2012, awesome, congratulations! Same here with patriotism. The last 40 years of my life were wasted negotiating with and finding the balance between Swiss and American nationalists. Having now dropped off the American problem, my life has now become much easier and enjoyable because I no longer have to take America into consideration with the things that I do and say.
@usxcanada, I agree about the organization and I should probably start doing something about it. It is important for Brock to work together with everyone as much as possible, with people being encouraged and motivated to express their views no matter how controversial they may be.
@calgary411, the concept of “conspiracy theorist rantings” is tricky and many postings at Brock may fall into that category. How much relevance such may have is often questionable. For example, I read an interesting article today and thought about re-posting it at IBS. Is this a “conspiracy theorist rant”? I don’t know:
This is getting to be a very good news thread. Now we have Citizen of Europe and hijacked2012 with CLNs. Congratulations to both of you! You’ve obviously left the nightmare while the leaving was good. For others to come, don’t worry, that door hasn’t closed yet.
@SwissPinoy,
Too Late to Leave the U.S. — in my mind only, very relevant to the subject matter here.
The few that have been put in “Pending” were debated thoroughly, with input from others than those that helped start this site, and consensus was showcasing someone’s particular unrelated issue and / or, yes, in one case a conspiracy theory that had no relevance or place here.
You’re right; it is very tricky — a balance between turning off people who are actually looking for information to help them make decisions regarding “US citizenship-based taxation” that is affecting their lives (which is a main purpose of this site) and turning off those who want to highlight other issues not so related to “discussing the issues of United States citizenship, extra-territorial taxation, FBAR, and FATCA“. There are many other sites where those commenters can make better use their time conversing with those others who have interest in whatever their issues may be.
My take is that the moderation at Isaac Brock is not about “Right or Wrong” but “Related or Unrelated”.