After two attempts to have Rickerby Wealth Group respond to my requests to have them cover the “elephant in the room” (FATCA) on one of their regular guest appearance on the morning news, Shaun Rickerby informs Global TV viewers of the impending US legislation. (My apologies for the low- tech recording off my PVR. Viewerrickerby2s need QuickTime Player-downloads are free).
@all, I received an email from Shaun Rickerby today: “Your question in fact provided fodder for discussion I had on Global about FATCA.
Candidly… I suspect that all the large CDN banks will (begrudgingly) put in place the compliance teams that WILL allow us to continue to deal with US citizens.
BUT… it’s a very controversial issue. What about privacy, sovereignty? How are small institutions going to be able to justify the cost of compliance?”
Those Mr Rickerby are the million dollar questions.
@bubblebustin…
Read my newest comments to Tim here… I bet Harper government trades off FATCA opposition for inclusion into the TPP
I don’t view TPP and FATCA as being related although the US I suspect is attempting to use the exact same negotating strategy which is to find a group of countries sympathetic to the US and try to stitch up a deal very favorible to the US and the IMPOSE it on the rest of the world. The problem is in the context of TPP form what I have heard from someone familar with what is going on is while Julia Gillard and Obama might be buddy buddy the Australian Civil Service in Canberra is not taking well to the idea of civil servants in DC telling them how to do their jobs. It also doesn’t help much for the US that most Australian public servants are probably going to be in their jobs a lot longer than Julia Gillard is. (TPP right now is basically the US, NZ, Australia, Singapore, Chile and a bunch of other small countries). The problem is the US in TPP is essentially asking Australia to scrap its very stringent product labelling and regulation system which isn’t making the public servants in Canberra who developed that system very happy. As it was put by several commentators I read on TPP its going to nowwhere without some type of major shift by Australia as to how they regulate their whole economy.
I received a letter last week from TD Bank Group. The first few paragraphs deal with the generalities of FATCA and advise TD is “actively engaged to ensure that TD customers will continue to be treated fairly under the new FATCA rules.
The end of the letter is where things get more interesting”
“While the FATCA guidelines apply to all non-US financial institutions around the world, there is also the possibility the Canadian and American governments could negotiate a bilateral agreement that would define the requirements that would apply to Canadian banks specifically.
While much uncertainty still exists regarding the obligations that Canadian banks will face under FATCA, we can assure you that TD is committed to pursing an outcome that recognizes the US government’s goal of preventing tax evasion, but does so in a manner that allows Canadian banks to comply with Canadian privacy laws and minimizes the impact to TD customers.”
Now, wouldn’t we like to know what is meant by Canadian and US governments could negotiate a bilateral agreement that would apply to Canadian banks specifically. Dare we hope this is what the negotiations are about? Could that be the reason things are so quiet right now?
If this ever happened, I know there would be a justifiable outcry from other countries, their financial institutions and especially “US persons” in those countries. However, I am not aware of the leaders of those countries fighting as hard or being as outspoken on this issue as Jim Flaherty has been (despite his long silence in recent months).
I neglected to mention a really important point about that TD Bank Group letter.
It is signed by Katherine Johnson, Associate Vice-President, FATCA. This seems to indicate TD is certainly gearing up for FATCA.