The exact text is:
NEGOTIATION OF AN INFORMATION EXCHANGE AGREEMENT WITH THE UNITED STATES
November 8, 2012
Negotiations are being held between Canada and the United States on an agreement to improve cross-border tax compliance through enhanced information exchange under the Canada-United States Tax Convention, including information exchange in support of the provisions enacted by the United States commonly known as the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA).
The purpose of this bulletin is to inform persons whose interests are affected by the provisions of FATCA that the Government is actively seeking a solution to issues raised by such provisions. The Government of Canada has received input from many individuals and groups in relation to the implications of FATCA.
Persons wishing to offer additional comments concerning the negotiations may send their views to:
Department of Finance
17th Floor, East Tower
140 O’Connor Street
Ottawa, Canada
K1A 0G5For further information contact:
Kevin Shoom
Business Income Tax Division
613-992-2980
I strongly suggest that the Isaac Brock Society make a formal submission. I am happy to volunteer my contribution to this – and I hope others will too. I note the following comment on this topic by Jim Jatras.
Canada seeks public input into #FATCA negotiations with Form Nation fin.gc.ca/treaties-conve…
— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) November 8, 2012
@calgary411 – may the force be with you!
Will be thinking of you. Someday hope to meet and celebrate together with others here – may we all soon be free, or achieve some better status – to each one as they would choose.
@Petros and @ all who’re working on or have submitted ideas and are researching, writing, meeting politicians, rewriting US tax laws within the homeland, meeting with politicians, and tweeting and posting and calling and being spokespeople and all else – thank you for your fellowship and all the good work.
@badger
🙂 and thank you for your words of inspiration. I often think of you as the soul of IBS.
Thanks for the kind words bubblebustin. It has really been IBS and all of you that have helped me get this far.
@Calgary,
Fingers and toes will all be crossed tomorrow. Thinking of you.
@Calgary – Finally, your time has arrived! Nothing makes me happier than knowing sometime tomorrow, you are one huge step closer to being FREE! We’ll all be with you and waiting to hear how it went!
@Calgary, did you use snail mail or did you find Mr. shoom’s email address. I was able to find it on the interweb= Kevin dot Shoom at fin dot gc dot ca
@calgary411 and all
Thank you for you kind words about…my words. You are of course more than welcome to utilize them as you like. Personally, I think it is most effective — and I address this to all who are submitting a response to Mr. Shoom — to express yourself in your own words. I will be submitting my own thing by the weekend. I will do so by snail mail, as I think this has more impact than email. The chief points I expect to make are:
Here is the link to the site for the Federal NDP shadow cabinet contacts – including their toll-free phone numbers:
http://www.ndp.ca/shadow-cabinet
If you’re e-mailing, you could cc each one, or if writing, could specifically address to the members of the BC Caucus, who seemed to have been most active on this.
MP Hoang Mai raised all those very specific questions in Parliament re the US and extraterritorial taxation, enforcement of FBARs, etc. – which is in the Hansard record – and which caused the Federal government to answer in Parliament about FBAR enforcement and the related issues.
His focus is National Revenue http://hoangmai.ndp.ca/
Peggy Nash is Finance http://peggynash.ndp.ca/
You might also want to specifically send a copy to those below with a sentence that speaks to their area of responsibility, since FATCA is in conflict with several facets of Canadian society:
Charlie Angus
Ethics, Access to Information and Privacy
Paul Dewar
Foreign Affairs
Hélène Laverdière
Americas and Consular Affairs
Deputy International Development
Brian Masse
Canada-US Border
Ontario-Quebec Continental Gateway
Wayne Marston
Human Rights
Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario
Sorry for the delay in answering, Petros.
I sent my submission by email to finpub@fin.gc.ca mailto:finpub@fin.gc.ca , with a copy to Kevin.Shoom@fin.gc.ca mailto:Kevin.Shoom@fin.gc.ca . (I will also cc, by email, Prime Minister Stephen Harper (pm@pm.gc.ca ), Finance Minister Flaherty (jim.flaherty@parl.gc.ca ), my MP Michelle Rempel, among others.)
I will also send a hard copy to:
Department of Finance
17th Floor, East Tower
140 O’Connor Street
Ottawa, Canada
K1A 0G5
Attention: Kevin Shoom, Business Income Tax Division
Additional thanks to nobledreamer and tiger for your good wishes. I’m getting ready for this afternoon’s appointment.
I want to tell you how much luckier I am than most of you — I have today’s appointment in live in the city where I live and where there is a US Consulate; it’s even within walking distance so I don’t have to pay for parking. Consider the excessive extra cost for some of you in getting to a city with a Consulate, transportation, accommodation, meals, etc. My situation could be considered a luxury.
I’m just saying that there will be considerable cost savings to me compared to many of you (and this is more uneven ground we have to renounce or relinquish, depending on where we live), which will be used for the professionals I have hired (also a short walk away) to help me get to where I’m at, along with all of your help. I appreciate it all.
*calgary411, I’m not sure what to say since this is a rather sensitive topic, but I’m sure that this is a very difficult step to take for you, but I’m sure that you are making the right choice and that things will be better afterwards.
*Don’t know of anyone posted this already:
Wow. You folks have all been very busy. I just got back from two weeks in the US (no border hassles for my wife) and I’m catching up on all the developments on Brock. Congrats to everyone (and thanks to Jim Jatras) involved in that press release — I wish I could say I’m confident it will get widely picked up, but it probably won’t. What I’m finding out in my own journalistic pursuits is that this topic is just too too complicated and only the dedicated ones will take the time to understand it.
But — the timing is right — given the call for public comments on an IGA and Flaherty’s comments that they are close to a deal. I wish I could believe that Flaherty won’t sell us all out, but I’ve watched those guys do exactly that time and time again. They DO NOT operate on principle, only expediency.
Calgary411 — congratulations. I told your story to my US relatives in the last few days, and they are appalled at how their country treats people outside its borders. But they are ignorant of this issue, and minus my wife’s involvement with it they would not know anything about what is going on.
It’s important to fight the good fight against a possible Canadian IGA — but I now firmly believe (especially in the wake of the no-change election that just happened) that the only way FATCA will be beaten is through opposition within the US, largely from the banking industry and its Congressional supporters. That reciprocity provision, if they live up to their word, will repatriate billions in administrative and systems costs on US financial institutions — and that’s where the best chance of change comes from. My fear is that the US will simply not deliver on reciprocity, despite signing agreements that commit them to it, and the the countries that signed IGAs will just shrug their shoulders.
No sign of the CLN yet — but it’s early days for us. And no response yet from the Vancouver consulate on my request for stats — I’ll be pursuing that today.
@Arrow
‘And no response yet from the Vancouver consulate on my request for stats’. No surprise there; you can read on other threads that the Vancouver consulate does not seem to acknowledge that they receive emails from some of us waiting for our 2nd appointments. I know your wife waited quite some time for her 2nd appt. Did they contact her eventually, or did she contact them repeatedly to get the appt?
@Tiger —
She waited 5 months for #2 — and they did eventually phone her (I think the call came in early June). Now it’s just a waiting game. I think I’ll hear back on the stats eventually — they apparently emailed my BC Business article to Ottawa and the State Department in Washington and I’m told they were a little frantic over that for a while. But my guess is the election probably stymied anything not related to that. I just sent them another email — let’s see how long it takes to get a response.
@Arrow
Thanks for the quick reply.
Patience was never my strong point!!!!
looks like they released a new version of how to hunt down and screw US persons.
Version 2 of the intergovernmental agreement IGA is released here
We know how important it is to hunt down people who are hiding their money in low tax regions like Canada, Sweden, Norway, and Australia.
http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/tax-policy/treaties/Pages/FATCA.aspx
@all.
Thank you for all the effort you are making to try to stop this insanity from happening. I really don’t know how the US can have both FATCA and citizenship based taxation without persecuting its own people and permanently altering how they interact with the world. I can’t imagine a world with FATCA, for all the reasons we have discussed in our short time together here on Brock.
As I see it, we are the first generation of expats, broadly speaking, to realize we have been shackled. Many will follow. Of all the things to be on the cutting edge of. Geronimo!
@Bubblebustin,
Very well stated. The irony is that the signers of America’s Declaration of Independence faced a similar situation a couple hundred years ago.
The British government tried to enforce “citizenship based taxation without representation” in the colonies and it failed. The US government’s enforcement of “citizenship based taxation without representation” upon today’s ex-pats scattered across the globe will fail as as well.
Renouncing or relinquishing one’s US citizenship is like signing a personal Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson would be proud of today’s ex-pats for refusing to put up with such tyranny coming out of Washington.
The irony of “citizenship based taxation without representation” runs so deep it actually invalidates the origins of the values of America as a nation.
George Washington himself is surely rolling in his grave about the insanity emanating from the city bearing his name.
A better way to state it:
The irony of “citizenship based taxation without representation” runs so deep it actually invalidates the origins of America as a nation.
Sometimes I hit the send button too early.
*Patrick Henry, actually “George Washington” was his former name that he used prior to renouncing US citizenship some years back. After renouncing, he had change his name to George Geneva, but he never informed the US government of such and thus doesn’t have a CLN since the dead haven’t been requesting proof of loss of citizenship for identification purposes, yet.
I’ve fixed your original comment, Patrick Henry, and will delete this one soon.
Ha, ha, requiring CLNs from the dead? Don’t give em too many ideas.
I’m so pleased I was able to find Denise Savoie on Facebook. To those of you who don’t know, Ms Savoie is a former NDP MP who was a very outspoken critic of FATCA. I sent her our press release via private message and asked her if she would respond to the Department of Finance’s request for input on Canada entering into an IGA on FATCA. Now if any private citizen can stickhandle around Ottawa, it would be her.
@bubblebustin
That was an awesome idea! She’ll probably feel less encumbered to speak truth to power now that she’s out of the limelight herself, and hopefully her voice will still carry some weight, especially within the NDP caucus. Those guys better not drop the ball.