This whole situation is getting ridiculous. Through citizenship-based taxation the U.S.:
1. Steals from the wealth of countries;
2. Steals from the wealth of individuals who:
- just happen to have been born in the U.S.; or
- were born to U.S. parents who just happened to be living abroad
3. Terrorizes U.S. citizens living abroad and dual citizens in the same way that Eritrea does.
4. violates the national sovereignty of other countries by: Continue reading →
The phone rang this morning. For a few minutes, my actual phone number was on the blog, by mistake, and one very quick reader, Dianne, phone me from Winterpeg. Not long ago, she learned that the United States still considers her to be an American, even though she hasn’t believed herself to be American since the age of 18. So I asked her to write up her story so that the Isaac Brock Society could help her sort out this issue. Here it is: Continue reading →
Put Sweden down on the side of the good guys. Here is their comment letter. Pretty blunt. More than even Brazil
I found an interesting guide to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms on the Canadian Bar Association’s website with an interesting commentary that I always suspected to be true but have never seen in black and white.
Supreme Court of Canada’s approach to equality Section 15 does not require everyone to be treated the same way regardless of different circumstances. Showing that the government or the law is treating you differently, or showing that a law that appears to treat people in the same way affects members of a particular group differently, is just one step in showing a violation of section 15 equality rights.
You also need to show that section 15 applies to the different treatment you received. Section 15 prohibits discrimination because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age, or mental or physical disability. It also prohibits discrimination on “analogous” (comparable) grounds. The Courts have said that something “analogous” is a personal characteristic that you can’t change at all, or you can’t change without great personal cost or difficulty – like sexual orientation or CITIZENSHIP.
The Supreme Court has said that the central purpose of section 15 is to promote “substantive equality” by fighting discrimination. So in addition, courts will focus on whether the law or government action is discriminatory in creating a disadvantage by perpetuating (or indefinitely continuing) prejudice or stereotyping.
http://www.cba.org/bc/public_media/rights/232.aspx
Maybe. That is what the Bloomberg Business Week Headline says. Since this is a story about Switzerland, it is a good attention catching headline which plays upon a bias that all Americans living in Switzerland must be wealthy. Or, I would bet, it is an editor choosing a title to catch attention. That is what they do! I thought I would post it, in case some of you have not yet seen the story. I also wanted to point out that Andy Sundberg has been prominently mentioned at the beginning of the article. Continue reading →
Today I happened to run across the IRS’ list of tax forms provided in Braille format for the benefit of blind and visually-impaired taxpayers who are filling out their own returns. All the forms that an ordinary Homeland taxpayer might need are there. But quite a number of forms that ordinary overseas taxpayers might need are not: Form 8621 for your “foreign” ETFs, Forms 8858 or 8865 if you’re self-employed through a “foreign” sole proprietorship or partnership entity (for example, a blind husband running a business jointly with his sighted wife), and Form 926 if you form a “foreign” corporation and invest money or property into it so it can actually do business, for example.
Of course, even if you have 20/20 vision, it is not reasonably possible to properly fulfill all your reporting requirements as a U.S. Person abroad and still lead a normal financial life in your country of settlement. Whether or not you can see, more likely than not you’ll need professional assistance to properly comply with the punitive U.S. filing requirements. But the absence of Braille versions of those forms is just another small symptom of the same problem we all face: no one in the IRS even understands how many ordinary non-resident taxpayers are supposed to be filing these ridiculous forms, and no one involved in implementing the insane system is interested in making it easier to become compliant.
