Liberty and justice for all United States persons abroad

The Isaac Brock Society

Posted on by Posted in Issues regarding US persons abroad 29 Comments

As if it’s not enough to have Schulman, Schumer and many others  telling us how we should have life-long financial servitude to the United States, now Winnipeg Free Press headline demands: U.S. Citizens Living Here:  Do Your Tax Duty

The author even reminds Canadian snowbirds of their obligation to dear old Uncle Sam:

“Just to be clear, this applies to Canadian citizens who are winter vacationers in the United States, including the vast majority who have never worked in the U.S. and do not earn any money there.”

And, then he goes on to give some insightful advice to Canadians earning a living in U.S.

“Speaking of Canadians working in America, I think it will be the L.A. Kings in five or six games.”

Hockey?!?  Not one word about the massive penalties Canadians and other immigrants to U.S. can face if they don’t report on their retirement or other savings in their home countries.

The author is a fee-for service financial planner.  I don’t think I’ll hire him anytime soon.

29 thoughts on “US Citizens: Do Your Tax Duty”

  4. @Wilderness: Winnipeg Free Press ran it as a column, not as an advertorial. So, they are participating in sloppy and unethical journalism. Unfortunately, many readers may take this as absolute fact.

  5. …and not great journalism at that.
    As the article is directed at US citizens, he doesn’t seem to grasp that banks will need to ask each and every customer the question of whether they are a US person, not just US persons: ‘Starting Jan. 1, 2014, Canadian financial institutions are going to be asking you if you are a U.S. citizen or green card holder.’, I’m really not clear on what will be expected of the banks under FATCA, will the bank only have question the customer if the customer’s records shows indicia? That would certainly allow a lot of US persons to fly under the radar.

  9. I hate that a fellow Winnipeger wrote this article. It is stressful enough having to deal with the US wanting even those with tenuous ties to file income tax without one of our own Canadians showing such a lack of support. I wonder how he would feel if he was in this situation!

  14. @Bubblebustin. That’s odd, I rec’d my registration confirmation immediately and was able to login. I did have problems with it freezing when trying to add my comment (wrote it 3 times and lost it), but I finally, this morning, decided it was because I was being too lengthy (altho it didn’t say so), so I broke it up into two comments, and both posted right away.

  16. James George Jatras also wrote a piece that I think is quite excellent. It details ‘our’ issues, but hits the mainlander American in a way that they will understand. It was written April 30th but I missed it. It’s seems to still be open for comments

    http://blog.independent.org/2012/04/30/global-financial-information-regime-looms/

    “The virtual end of financial privacy, with Americans’ personal asset information collected wholesale by the IRS in order to provide it—with questionable security protections—to foreign governments and, in all likelihood, to an international financial authority.”

  18. @outraged, thanks for the Jatras link – I had seen other pieces by him, but not that one – which contains more detail.

  19. I posted this comment twice now, but ABC News still refuses to publish it, so I’ll post it here:

    Not paying taxes on foreign earned income does not mean that Americans abroad don’t pay any taxes. People who live in other nations actually pay taxes too. Believe it or not, Americans in America are not the only people in the world who pay taxes. $200,000 may also sound like a lot of money Alabama, but exchange rates, cost of living and foreign income taxes can greatly reduce the value of such money abroad, especially when one forces Americans to be double-taxed on their income in two nations. I wonder how the taxed in Alabama would feel if their income was double-taxed by Sweden according to Swedish living standards? They would be all up in arms.

    This comment was posted to:
    Big Paychecks, Tiny Tax Burdens: How 21,000 Wealthy Americans Avoided Paying Income Tax
    http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/06/big-paychecks-tiny-tax-burdens-how-21000-wealthy-americans-avoided-paying-income-tax/#comment-26715421

  20. I put in a comment too, in support of you Canadians. I was FBAR_Compliant. Also posted a comment at the blog, independent.org Thanks

  21. I agree with one of the comments to the article on the site itself. The article is a misinfomercial, not a proper press article. Shame on you, David Christianson. Welcome to the Hall of Shame here at IBS. Maybe if you publish something that reveals our side of the story, we can list you in our Hall of Fame.

  22. Cross Post: http://stopunconstitutionaldoubletaxation.wordpress.com/2012/06/03/u-s-citizens-living-here-do-your-tax-duty-an-article-in-winipeg-free-press-that-appears-to-be-a-simple-informercial-for-the-authors-accounting-business/

    I made the same response to Christianson’s article on the Winipeg Free Press site:
    >

    This article does not fully address the issues faced by US persons living outside of the US, and reads a bit like an infomercial for the author’s services.

    The US has long overstepped its bounds through extraterritorial legislation that violates the constitutional protections afforded by foreign countries, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the U.S. Constitution.

    US Persons are being forced to forfeit their rights to privacy and due process under the 4th and 5th Amendments, being subject to “excessive fines” in violation of the 8th, and are being legislated against without the proportional representation in the House of Representatives afforded by Article 1, Section 2 USCONST.

    Recent bills such as the “Ex-Patriot Bill”, provisions in the highway bill for passport confiscation and the blockage of payments to and credit cards issued by foreign banks that refuse to adhere to FATCA abominable acts that only continue the policy of taxation without representation already practiced by the US Congress and the administration through double taxation, FBAR enforcement, restrictions on renunciation of US nationality, and FATCA.

    People abroad are getting tired of the US trying to finance its own bailout by extorting money from US persons living abroad, most of whom never profited from the boom in the US. Things are especially bad for US persons living in high-cost-of-living countries where the poor US Dollar exchange rate puts them in increasingly higher tax brackets in the US (above the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion, FEIE) even in countries where the local income tax should wipe out the US tax through the Foreign Tax Credit, there are issues with the Alternative Minimum Tax, and restrictions on the Foreign Housing Exclusion and Deduction requiring one to live in the center of particular cities abroad (and not taking into account the high cost of living in many suburbs of such cities). In high cost of living countries like Switzerland, which has slightly lower income tax but plenty of other forms of fee and taxation that are not taken into account as deductions in the US, many find themselves unable to pay their bills.

    The whole situation is causing strain on families, bankruptcies, divorce, and even suicide. It is time for US persons abroad to have their own Boston Tea Party and throw off these shackles. We shall not let the US do to us what the crown and parliament did to the colonists prior to the American Revolution of 1776. NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION, NO CITIZENSHIP-BASED TAXATION.

    http://isaacbrocksociety.com/

    http://isaacbrocksociety.com/2011/12/13/is-the-taxation-of-us-persons-abroad-constitutional/

    http://stopdoubletaxation.wordpress.com/

    http://www.aca.ch/joomla/index.php

  23. Another Canadian blog piece. This one in Canoe Technology by David Canton

    U.S. act sparks privacy concerns in Canada

    Here’s the money quote….

    n other words, we have U.S. legislation that requires Canadian banks to create and instal expensive systems to send the U.S. government financial information about Canadians who may have some tenuous connection with the U.S.

    The cost of these systems will be borne by the banks, and thus indirectly by Canadians in general, and Canadian governments in terms of fewer taxes as a result of the higher initial and ongoing compliance costs.

  24. thanks for posting that @justme, I saw it and was heartened at the tone – and that it noted the cost to ALL Canadians, not only the individuals affected.

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