Snowbirds may become an extinct species, at least within the borders of the United States. Few outsiders know this but Canadians live in igloos year round. Snowbirds are Canadians who seek warmer climate, especially during their retirement years. They have been a significant boon to the real estate markets in Southern states, especially Florida, but one should not forget places like my Dad’s trailer park in San Benito where numerous Winter Texans can play year-round golf and outdoor tennis. Mostly, they spend their enormous retirement wealth that it took many years working in Canada to earn. Expect the snowbirds to start flying further south, to places like Cayman Islands, Mexico, or Costa Rica, anywhere outside the reach of the IRS taxman.
It is no exaggeration to say that United States border guards now have had tax enforcement added to their list of duties. A few months back at the Expat Forum, Omater wrote a little anectdote (now apparently censored), still unverified:
I just got back from my local CGA who is doing our business tax return. He bought a house in the US at about the same time I did. I told him about my trip next week and he advised that I take copies of my last 6 tax returns, which I had already decided to do.
He said that last October a good friend of his who is a dual citizen as well as a CPA and CGA was headed to the US to visit family. They scanned his passport and told him that he could not board his plane for failure to file tax returns. The thing about this guy is that he had always filed his returns in a timely manner, every year since he had landed in Canada. He had to get his office staff to find 6 years of tax returns and fax them to wherever he was at the airport. By the time that happened he had missed his plane.
This is the only verifiable account I have heard of somebody being refused entrance to a plane headed for the states.
Numerous commenters considered the above story to be an urban myth. But Omater now offers a couple more stories of Canadians–not US citizens–who are planning to sell their US condos as a result of the recent crackdown and the hassles that they are receiving from border guards (emphasis mine):
The stories I am hearing first hand are not about United States Citizens, but about Canadians. I had taken a water aerobic class and was sitting in the hot tub afterwords when one woman talking to another woman got louder and louder about being stopped at the border on the way to Palm Springs and were told that they had to file a US tax return. She was very angry and said they would give the place away before they filed a tax return to the IRS when it was none of their business, taxes or no taxes.
A few weeks ago I took my dog to the vet and she asked where in the south I was from. She then told me she had done her residency in Memphis, my home town. I asked her if she had used a green card and she said no and, “Thank God”. She started telling me about her uncle who had a place in Arizona where he and his wife spent 6 months per year, mostly because of his allergies. This year they were headed down and were stopped at the border and told that they had been flagged as being required to file a tax return on their worldly income. When her uncle told them they never spend more than the 6 month allotted time, they were told that they could visit 6 months but would have to file a tax return based on a formula that would basically only allow them a few months per year otherwise. I once read that it worked out to around 120 days. (I am sure you know what I am talking about here.) However, the formula that these people were told about only allowed them a few months per year over a three-year period. Everybody is pretty livid that they will be required to pay tax and to expect no benefit in return. I asked the vet how the IRS knew about her uncle and she didn’t know.
People are talking about selling as soon as the economy allows them to. We just bought a place last April, before I heard of FATCA and FBAR and thankfully we bought cheap. I hate it but we will have to sell. We had hoped to have 6 months a year in our little villa for retirement. I am not sure what we will do now, but it will not be in the states. I can tell you, we spent a lot of money down there. It will be a loss to a depressed little community whose people are always grateful for our business.
I talked to several Real Estate brokers and agents there and I wonder why they are not flying off the handle about this! If they think things are bad now, just wait until the last Canadian leaves Florida, California and Arizona!
Thanks for all you do!
The words, “they had been flagged” provides further proof that this is a systematic usage of border guards to enforce taxes. I would like to track down when the border guards started doing the IRS’ dirty work. Which POTUS approved this crack down? Was it Obama, Bush, or did it start earlier than these two?
@Just Me: They must relinquish US citizenship, once their Indian citizenship is approved. India doesn’t allow full dual-citizenship. The OCI is limited citizenship for life, like US green card. They can’t vote or contest for political posts. I didn’t know about FBAR until I wanted to start a company to bid for contracts from defense-department. I must be a citizen to bid for defense projects.
I was middle class person and stood in queues at American consulate many times, but I always wanted to return to India and I returned to India as I planed. But unfortunately, Indian government started offering dual-citizenship and in a weak movement I decided to apply for US citizenship. Still I can’t believe, it would become a nightmare. I don’t owe any taxes, because my income is very low and for many years below threshold for filing US taxes. But I have many accounts and joint accounts with my aging parents. The balance in the accounts is over US$100K and unfortunately, the money is transferred between the accounts. My parents reported income and paid taxes in India.
Many people disparate (as I did) to get into the USA don’t know how complex it would be, if they return to their homeland. No one would believe me about complex tax code and forms and penalties, if they return to their homeland.
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@Administrators… I included a link to this article on my blog and now it shows up in comments. Is this what I’m NOT supposed to do? I see it shows as a pinkback. If I’m not supposed to do this, let me know, and I’ll remove it….
Hi, outraged. Hope you’re doing well these days. Guess Petros is the only one to be able to answer you questions about pingbacks.
However, I am glad that people can easily get to your site from here and to this site from there when they are reading. So, I’m glad your pingback is there.
@Calgary, thanks for that. If Petros deems this incorrect, I’ll remove it. I’m doing well, took a break from obsessing about this for awhile, but now I’m back at it again – that old pendulum swing, you know? I’ve read that it’s human nature to look for plots or ‘conspiracy theories’. Guess it proves I’m human. Albeit a Canadian one. 🙂
@outraged The pingback is not a problem. It was nice to see your references back to Isaac Brock. Thank you. We ask that if you wish to post that particular blog post at Isaac Brock that you actually copy the entire post into a post here at Isaac Brock. What we ask that you not do is reblog the post, because it give us absolutely no editorial access to it, except to erase it. You may, however, reblog your post back to your own blog site, if you wish. Thus, the authorized action is called “cross-posting” with the full post accessible to the editors here at Isaac Brock. “Reblogging” to Isaac Brock is the bad thing.
@Petros, thanks. I hadn’t intended to post it here, just on my own. I actually removed the embedded link and then just put it under the links section, so hopefully any reblogging is stopped. Is it within good taste to keep a section that I’ve quoted as an excerpt? Obviously, I’m still learning the ins and outs and dos and don’ts of blogging.
@outragedcanadian,
re: “it’s human nature to look for plots or ‘conspiracy theories’”
I’m finding that there is often good reason to at least be wary – for example;
“FBI: We need wiretap-ready Web sites – now”
by Declan McCullagh May 4, 2012 9:24 AM PDT
“CNET learns the FBI is quietly pushing its plan to force surveillance backdoors on social networks, VoIP, and Web e-mail providers, and that the bureau is asking Internet companies not to oppose a law making those backdoors mandatory.”
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57428067-83/fbi-we-need-wiretap-ready-web-sites-now/
An article that links DATCA and FATCA, and also calls the harm to US ”persons” outside the US a ‘human rights’ issue.
http://www.newsmax.com/Rahn/Geithner-Obama-IRS-Rubio/2012/05/01/id/437693
“……. the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. It puts a huge paperwork, cost, and legal liability burden on foreign financial institutions and U.S. banks that also operate abroad. It is having the predictable consequence of making it very difficult, if not impossible, for Americans living abroad to have a local bank account (which, in many places, is almost a necessity).
There is more than $10 trillion in foreign-portfolio (stocks and bonds) investment in the U.S. This is not counting direct investment by foreign corporations and others. Much of this $10 trillion-plus is managed by foreign financial institutions. Now many of them are saying they are going to leave the U.S. market because of these regulations, which means the potential loss of several million U.S. jobs.
As Mr. Keating has said, “These costly information reporting regimes are not used by the banks themselves; instead, these are required for the sole benefit of the IRS. In some cases, it is difficult to understand how the IRS will even use these new reporting rules.”
The real scandal is that the Treasury/IRS never did a real cost-benefit analysis before finalizing these rules. The reason they didn’t is obvious. Neither rule could have been justified on economic or human rights grounds — it is all about power for a few in Washington and their foreign bureaucrat cronies.
The failure to do what any responsible person would do — by looking at the real and potential resulting harm — constitutes willful negligence. If Geithner or IRS Commissioner Douglas H. Shulman were in the private sector, they clearly could be indicted and probably convicted because of both the monetary damage and risk to individual lives these rules promulgated by them are causing and will cause”……………………..
A good piece by Ilana Mercer titled, “Planet IRS.”
Mercer is an Israeli born Canadian citizen classical liberal / libertarian columnist born in Israel. She writes very well and would probably find Isaac Brock most interesting.
http://www.wnd.com/2012/04/planet-irs/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilana_Mercer
http://www.ilanamercer.com/newsite/biographical.php
Interesting, that several articles have said that tax amnesties don’t work, but here is a large US city offering the very same:
http://www.cleveland.com/wickliffe/index.ssf/2012/05/wickliffe_announces_amnesty_pe.html
“Marty Germ, finance director, notes that back taxes and interest must be paid in full prior to June 30 to avoid penalties. Germ adds that residents can contact the city if they are uncertain whether they missed a tax bill or overlooked a taxable source of income when filing.
According to Germ, individuals are “often misinformed about taxes.” Germ reveals that some older residents believe they do not have to pay income taxes after a certain age. Other community members fail to report rental income, gambling winnings or monies earned while self-employed.”
Funny that inside the US, they can understand that “individuals are “often misinformed about taxes.””, but outside – far far away from the ‘center of the universe’, we’re supposed to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the federal regulations – and any changes enacted on the fruits of our local non-US labour – no matter how technical – and retroactive.
Outraged wrote:
You may quote as little or as much as Isaac Brock Society as you like. We will not sue you and in addition, it adds to our prestige whenever anyone cites our articles. Therefore, you should put the link to Isaac Brock back into your post. That has nothing to do with “reblogging”. The link is good because the more sites that link to Isaac Brock the better. That is why in the past I have encouraged people to put links in their comments on other blogs or in newspaper articles. Links back to Isaac Brock increase our traffic and our pagerank.
Note on fair usage: We want to keep our citations of newspaper articles down to fair usage when we do not have permission to copy the article to our blog. Many newspaper outlets are very sensitive to their copyright, and they will indeed go after successful blogs that have cited their articles. This is especially true of the Associated Press which has a notorious reputation for wanting to sue blogs even for quoting small excerpts of their articles.
@Badger, well in a strange way it’s comforting to know that I’m not alone in suspecting malovence behind all this. Sometimes I get so upset at all this big brother crap (thanks for the link, BTW), I have to go away for a while and calm down. I truly fear what life we might be living in 20 years time. Heck… less than that…
@Petros – ah, light begins to glimmer. Will re-link! Thanks for your help.
@ outraged rather than fear the future, it is better to hedge the future by owning some spam, a few stores of other staples and some physical gold and silver. Perhaps a generator, if you are afraid the power grid will go down.
@Petros, we think alike. Have already bought the generator… besides isn’t the world going to end on December 21st, anyway according to the Mayan calendar? What am I doing worrying about all this crap, I should be out living it up, spending my money and giving the US the metaphorical finger!
@Petros…
In this thread people have placed some very good links to other articles or news stories that are of interest. Some I had already discovered previously, and some were new to me.
Scattered all through out the Comments on Isaac Brock are many many more. I am always looking for them, as like you discovered the Al Lewis link from a comment on another thread, they can become a good source material for another post or tweet.
On the right hand column, I see there is a heading called External Articles that hasn’t been updated for some time. You couldn’t possibly list that many there anyway, or it would run on forever down the column.
I have been mulling over how better to keep current and good article links in one place, as a resource for all of us who just can’t remember where we saw that, and who would best administer it.
Now, I have to think that many of us keep our own favorites somewhere, (our browsers probably) but having something more universal that you could go to see the new ones have been dropped into comments on threads that you may not have read due to time constraints, would be helpful, I would think.
Any interest from any Administrators in doing this?
Or, alternately should I just create a blog post called News Links, and have nothing else but ones I have found either here, or from other sources. I would think it might be helpful for those not slaves to searching the internet to have a central repository.
I haven’t taken it on, as it does require a certain about of dedication. I don’t want to take it on, and then let it falter after it becomes too much work.
An example of news links on a specific subject on steroids is Antiwar.com. I am not that ambitious, but putting up one thread that then was featured on the right hand column that contains nothing good stories from around the internet related to FATCA, FBAR, OVDI, Citizenship taxation, might be something I or someone else would be willing to do.
It would be best as a collaborative effort. I would want to keep it simple. Create the linked headlines in the body of the Post, and then just use Replies as just a way to submit new candidates for “The List”. After submission and inclusion, the reply would be trashed to keep the Post clean of clutter.
Think it over. Shoot it down if you wish. Just something I have been mulling over… Any other or better suggestions?
Another model is what Jack does….without the commentary as I don’t think I could be that dedicated!
http://bit.ly/JVE2Eo
@all… thanks for the links here, as they have been rich twitter material for me.
Articles or news stories of interest. That is what USxCanada InfoShop has tried to do. So far the traffic over there has not rewarded the effort. Maintenance is a breeze compared to the data definition and initial set-up.
Criteria may be too selective for your taste, but less is more for people who do not want to be overwhelmed with minutiae and repetition. (Crap from Al Whoever does not make the grade.)
Brock is a great forum, but its information architecture stinks. And always will, because that is not what WordPress is set up to do, though it can be kludged into a decent reading list, providing that function is made primary.
I think we have a major problem with Dark Web that will never go away – search engines that mask and/or downgrade the info that people should be finding. Good to hear in recent postings that at least a few Brockers found their way here through broad-spectrum search.
@Just Me, @Petros, @usxcanada:
usxcanada has a wonderful resource for relevant news articles, US Citizens in Canada Info Shop: http://usxcanada.wordpress.com/. Is this something we could put a link to on the Isaac Brock main page under “Our Resources”? So as not to re-invent the wheel?
Or, as you suggest, we could put a NEWS LINKS sticky on the main page, having a link to the usxcanada site as the main resource under there — because it is done so well, with a summary of what each new article contains. (This would be like the Relinquishments and Renunciations database and Consulate Visit Report Directory stickies at the top of the main page). In addition to the usxcanada link (with permission), we could include additional ones identified in the comments of Isaac Brock site.
You beat me to it, usxcanada. Your site is a great resource!!!!!
calgary411 – Thanks for the encouragement. Brock is free to link at willl, and to reuse any material with credit to source. The door is always open to considering the addition of citations that may have been overlooked. InfoShop offers a contact form that can be used to make suggestions.
@usxcanada
Thanks for the come back.
I was unaware what you were doing there, and so appreciate the link and the info. I knew some good ideas would float up, if I mentioned the subject. Also, in doing some research on for another comment, I was reminded that ACA is also keeping a good resource list since November. If they keep it up, that is another link to consider…
http://bit.ly/yYwNgS
@Indian_Expat
I don’t know if you are interested, but I found this CPA service that was catering to Indian immigrants and talking about Opting Out of the OVDI. I read it through, and thought it was way too limited and hyperbolic in the penalty threats. Decided to try posting something there to see if they would accept it. I took them a few days, but I see it is still there, and I directed people back here for information….
http://bit.ly/K4Kdd9
There is a link to USX under external resources. If someone wants to maintain the external articles part of the website, I’d be happy to hand that over to someone.
@Just Me: I left the USA in mid 1990s and never even visited the USA for nearly a decade. A quick analysis of my income and tax returns I filed in India resulted in no tax due (I left with large 1116 foreign tax credit that I can use in future as well, even after calculating US-taxes on tax-free gains of my retirement plans in India).
My understanding by reading many posts in this forum is that, I must file past 6 years before relinquishing my US citizenship (to avoid future criminal activity of not filing forms such as FBAR or not mastering IRS tax code and commit an accidental mistake). I can’t trust CPA’s, since most CPA’s don’t even know about FBAR before 2008. Did I misunderstand the suggestions, since you are taking about OVDI. I didn’t know that I must file taxes in the USA, even if I don’t owe any taxes. I am trying to rectify this mistake and become compliant, with least pain.