42 thoughts on “President Obama opens dialogue with U.S. citizens abroad – Seize the day! Hope you wont’ get fooled again! – UPDATED”

1. is AmericansAbroadAgainstObama.org open?

2. Americans for Obama doesn’t seem to work for Facebook, but Americans Abroad for Obama does.

3. @renounce, thanks for this post.
   Very interesting. Maybe this campaign was created in reaction to mounting disenchantment by some previous supporters and the growing embarrassment of the renunciation numbers?

   Re: “After the damage he has inflicted on U.S. citizens abroad, I don’t believe that even a member of “Democrats Abroad” would really vote for him.”

   It seemed to me from talking with some of his natural constituent expats that the best argument being mustered (hesitantly and weakly offered, in light of the blatantly punitive treatment of expats), was that the alternative was worse. Which was met with silence, or fear and anger by those who had just learned of the aggressive, punitive tax and reporting penalty layers – especially when FATCA, citizenship questions by banks (ex. TD) , and the hit to registered accounts was detailed. FATCA, FBARs and the rest of it – is now directly hitting dual children here through their RESP and TFSA plans – an insult which cannot be justified by their adult parents and plan contributors (grandparents) who are horrified to learn after the fact of the US reporting and penalty burdens, now inherited by themselves and their children – extending into the far foreseeable future. The renunciation process, and the rising numbers was openly mentioned.

   This insult is too big a pill to swallow – even for diehards. You can’t threaten people’s children and family assets and expect them to vote for you. Might work on those who still don’t know about the tax/reporting/penalty regimes, but that can’t last forever.

4. Obama is in so much trouble. The ship is sinking fast.

   Bill Clinton says Mitt Romney has a ‘sterling’ resume

   “There’s no question that, in terms of getting up, going to the office, and basically performing the essential functions of the office, a man who’s been governor and had a sterling business career crosses the qualification threshold.”

5. “Might work on those who still don’t know about the tax/reporting/penalty regimes, but that can’t last forever.”

   I think that is the problem and that a majority still don’t know about it and the possible fines.
   I wonder how many expats still don’t know about their obligation to file FBARs. I would think that number is still huge.
   The IRS has made some noise about foreign account reporting for the past couple years, but I personally learned about FBAR somehow by chance, like a lot of people, and I think the majority is still unaware of it, both in the expat and immigrant community. As someone said, they don’t tell you about it either when you get a passport or when you get a visa/green card.
   What would be the way to reach out to many more people who are likely to be affected, but do not know about it?
   For immigrants, contacting their consulate, and asking to publish an article in some of the article they send to their entire mailing list can be an option. I am not sure for American Expats what would be the best way to reach more of the community.
   The more people know and realize their risk, the more chances are they’ll try to express their concern.

6. Obama cartoon! How true!
   http://www.tedrall.com/

7. Can we have an “Americans abroad for nobody” campaign.

8. Some of the comments on the FB page talk about FATCA and the rise in renunciations, but it seems to me like the majority are from non-citizen well-wishers who just like Obama…Seems telling to me!

9. I have been busy tweeting these guys since they first started following me last week. They look very slick, like those astro turf grassroots web sites that were created to make the TeaParty look more “rooty” than they were. Social media is very slick these days…

   I would encourage you to sign up and send them a message about what you think of pass promises of the 2008 Obama campaign as compared to the last 3 years of actions….

   Here are a few tweets I have done recently….

   https://twitter.com/FBAR_Compliant/status/208571357854842881

   https://twitter.com/FBAR_Compliant/status/208292762955694080

   https://twitter.com/FBAR_Compliant/status/209175541838909443

   https://twitter.com/FBAR_Compliant/status/208994845421862913

10. I also submitted my comment, as follows:
    I remember well president Obama’s commitment back in 2008 to level the playing field for Americans abroad and how that commitment likely resulted in his capturing 90% of the votes from Americans living abroad of all stripes.

    But I am keenly aware that instead of keeping this commitment, he has totally ignored it. He signed legislation and turned the IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman loose to seek out and persecute Americans abroad, including those born abroad to a US parent that have not idea they are even US citizens, let aware that they have a tax obligation to the US . It is truly destroying Americans who, for whatever reason, live and work outside of the US . The current lax policy of this Administration with regard to our expatriate citizens is a gross violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the UN, which was largely written by Eleanor Roosevelt back in 1948. In view of our tax policy our current support of this Declaration is pure hypocrisy.

11. Why IRS wasting so much effort manpower on persecuting innocent minnows living in high tax nations while tax cheats robbing tax payers in broad day light. This CNN article says “Identity thieves could rake in $26 billion in tax refunds”: http://edition.cnn.com/2012/05/08/us/tax-refund-fraud/index.html

    May Obama don’t want to incontinence his voters in the election year. What else can explain depositing money in debt cards? Can’t they limit this to bank accounts, where getting identity is mandatory?

    Many experts said, not allowing debt cards can substantially reduce tax refund fraud, but IRS refuses to incontinence the thieves. But enforcing expensive draconian regulations on each and every financial institution in the world, which will cause every person who as bank accounts in the world, even if one is not US citizens he must prove that he is not US person for IRS tax purpose.

    The Obama administration don’t care injustice inflicted on US persons who live abroad and don’t owe any taxes, even IRM mandates a warning letter. In their view, expats don’t count. They don’t care about our votes. Most of can’t vote, because many recently learn that they are US citizens.

12. @InfoReporting, although you will not find it written in these tax laws anywhere, the underlying purpose of them is to fiscally punish US citizens for living and working or retiring in a different country other than the USA. What else could be the purpose? According to Nina Olsen’s (She’s the Taxpayer Advocate) Report to Congress, submitted earlier this year, 91% of the overseas filers end up owing zero to the the IRS becuase foreign tax credits and the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion totally satisfy their US tax obligation. But, if their income is $9,500 or more they absolutely must file US tax returns in order to substantiante they own the IRS nothing. And in order to file these tax returns they must have qualified professional assistance lest they make inconsequential errors which, on the FBAR form, will subject them to a minimum penalty of $10,000.

    They can expect to pay from $1000 to $3,000 for that professional assistance and then you have to hope, sometimes in vain, that the tax professioal you use really knows what he is doing and has your best interest at heart.

    Clearly Citizenship based taxation as practiced by the USA is a Sin Tax rather than a revenue-generator. It produces some $4or 5 billion per year in tax revenue, but the administrative and professional assistance costs probably are of the same magnitude.

    But it sure does far more damage to the eonomy than that. Because it makes US citizens largely unemployable for deployment abroad, because this extra tax burden makes them far too coistly, The US currently has a 12-month merchandise
    trade defict of $747 billion. The tax revenue that fails to be generated by the manufacturing-for-export jobs destroyed by this trade deficit, at 18% of GDP, represents some $130 billion,

    So when you compare this pittance in tax revenue generated by this tax with what is destroyed by it, the only conclusiuon is that it is a Sin Tax and not a revenue generating tax.

    Canada, by the way, currently has a 12-month trade surplus of $2 billion. These trade balance figures are from the on-line report of The Economist Magazine, May 26 issue. Search for The Economist trade, exchange rates, budget balance and insterest rates, wiuth the most recent Saturday date, and you will find the up-to-date figures every week for all of the major countries of the world. The trade figures are not published in the printed edition.

13. @Roger ‘although you will not find it written in these tax laws anywhere, the underlying purpose of them is to fiscally punish US citizens for living and working or retiring in a different country other than the USA. What else could be the purpose?’
    The fact that the FEIE, treaties and all other measures that are in place exist shows that there used to be a desire, and measures taken to reduce the burden of citizenship based taxation for US persons living abroad. I just shows that citizenship based taxation is a club that can be drawn and used at any time, often for political reasons.

14. If you want to have a dialog with Conservative readers about Citizenship taxation, there is a made to order Editorial today in the Washington Times, called.

    EDITORIAL: America’s tax refugees
    
    It is talking about citizens fleeing from high tax states to low tax states, so here is an opportunity to point out that this is something natural that should occur, but sadly on the country level the US erects barriers with the Citizenship taxation backing it very difficult to do. Roger has been busy commenting already, and I added onto his comment.

15. @bybblebustin, when citizenship based taxation was intrroduced under President Kennedy back in 1962, it was touted as being to punish the super-rich who have supposedly moved abroad to escape US income taxes. In those day the marginal tax rates in other countries were generally lower than in the US. The names of persons supposedly doing this to escape US taxes were never mentioned in the congressional testimony before that law was passed.

    Initially the FEIE – Foreign Earned Income Exclusion was $35,000 for those abroad 3 years or more. That was a executive-level wage in those days, equivalent to $266,000 in 20ll dollars, so it really affected very few Americans abroad. And they could claim a full foreign tax credit on all of the foreign income tax they paid, including that paid on the $35,000 of excluded income. So at most it affected just a handfull of very wealthy US expatriates.

    But once the Camel’s head was under the tent, it did not take long for Congress to tighten the screws. The first change was to cut back the FEIE to $25,000, But then in 1976 there were major changes: The FEIE was cut to $15,000 off the bottom at the lowest marginal tax rate with everyting else taxed at the higher marginal rate as if the FEIE had not been excluded. Foreign tax credits were limited to the foreign tax on income that was not excluded and later the rules were changed so that tax credits on earned income and passive income were separated and could no longer be used interchageabley to offset the US tax. And the tax court ruled that reimbursement for expenses incidential to the foreign assignment, such as tuition for children to attend an English Language school, were made taxable

    For US diplomats these reimbursements remained as tax free, but not for private citizens. That is why in Saudi Arabia Bechtel Corporation testifying at HW&M hearings in 1978 reported that one of their engineers with a salary of $43,000 what subject to a $51,000 tax, leaving him less than zero on which to live. I still have a copy of the printed testimony from that hearing at which I also testified.

    As far as Senator Proxmire, who sponsored and pushed this 1976 legislaton was concerned, Americans served no useful purpose in selling US exports or anything else by living outside of the US. He classed them all as “spending the tax evasion dollars, swathed in mink, at the gambling casinos of Monte Carlo” His mind was all made up and refused to allow anyone to “confuse him with the facts.” Unfortunately that same attitude prevails in Washington today.

16. The following message was sent to me by Patric Hale, and with his permission, I am posting it here.

    Friends,

    I’ve just signed up on their website and sent the following message. I suggest everybody does the same – maybe they’ll get the message:

    I’ve been a director of American Citizens Abroad for over 35 years. I lived in Europe for 28 of those years.

    Here is the question that ALL overseas Americans want to know:

    What has President Obama done for them that he deserves our support? We know that he has unleashed Doug Shulman of the IRS, and Senators Levin, Schumer, Casey, and Reid in writing legislation that makes the lives of ALL overseas Americans absolutely miserable so that more and more Americans are giving up their citizenship rather than live under the tyrannical tax regimes and policies of the USA while President Obama – and Hillary Clinton, too – has stood by and done nothing!

    This goes diametrically against everything that Pres. Obama pledged to overseas Americans in 2008.

    All politicians ever care about from overseas Americans is MONEY when elections come around but do absolutely NOTHING about the concerns overseas Americans have the rest of the time.

    There are 5 million overseas Americans and in a tight election as this one will be we are looking not just for smiling faces and broken promises but ACTION!

    The first thing Pres. Obama can do is tell the members of the Democratic Party in Congress to kill the amendment to the Transportation Bill that forces the IRS to determine whether a US citizen gets his/her passport renewed because of tax issues.

    How successful do you think the Democrats would be if they proposed that everyone in America had to pay his/her taxes before getting their drivers licenses renewed??

    Overseas Amreicans are SICK of being ignored and then dumped on by Congress while Pres. Obama does NOTHING to stop it! The IRS is even ignoring Executive Orders requiring cost-benefit analyses on their actions.

    So the question is simple: What is the President going to do to HELP overseas Americans instead of permitting his administration and party dump all over them?

17. Oh this is absolutely priceless. I just sent my own message which began with, “This is a joke, right?” Excuse me while I go pour myself a cup of soothing tea and try to get my blood pressure down….

18. @Roger, much appreciation of you taking the time to cover this for me.

19. @Victoria, so ironic after our earlier discussions on threads re the differences between Obama’s 2008 explicit promises to Americans abroad, and the exclusion of us in this campaign! Got a lot of nerve. Maybe feeling the numbers not secure?

    Don’t let it get in the way of your wellbeing. Best wishes.

20. Victoria – It will take more than a soothing cup of tea!

21. Reblogged this on Freedom from the tyranny of U.S. citizenship-based taxation for U.S. and dual citizens outside the U.S..

22. My U.S.-based father recently reminded me of California and New York’s attempts to tax the pensions of its former residents back in the 1990s. This was overturned by then-President Clinton’s 1996 endorsement of H.R. 394 (or P.L. 104-95) which prohibits state taxation of certain pension income of nonresidents received after December 31, 1995. My father then suggested those of us at the IBS seriously consider how to apply this legal precedent to the fight against the taxation of U.S. expatriates (he has been following the Isaac Brock Society in support of his ex-pat daughter and Canadian son-in-law. Thanks, Dad!). This is even more apropos of Friday’s “Washington Times” editorial about “America’s Tax Refugees” as posted earlier by Just Me. Any thoughts as to the use of this argument in our favour?

    I, for one, did not migrate to Canada to avoid paying U.S. taxes (in fact I was told by a “tax professional” I wouldn’t have to file as a stay-at-home mum earning nothing). Arugh! Losing sleep yet again over this as I prepare to visit the U.S. for my new Canadian job.

23. Perhaps contact Romney’s campaign to discuss FATCA and how unhappy Americans Abroad (Republicans and Democrats) are with Obama. A TV commercial should do the trick for the Homelanders. Obviously the repeal of FATCA would have to be high on any agenda.

24. @Laura, it is a great idea. The big problem is that back in 1924 in the Cook v Tait case, this was taken before the Supreme Report which ruled that iit is not unconstitutional to tax trhe income of US citizens living abroad,. It did not rule whether it was wise or not; only that it was not unconstitutiional. Perhaps there are new arguments, giving the abuse that has ensuded, but might cause the Supreme Court to take a second look. But recognize that the Supreme Court does not make a habit of reversing itself. Thanks to Andy Sundberg, founder of ACA, for having proivded this 1924 tax case reference..

25. Thanks Roger for the invaluable background. As always, much appreciated.