Badger is calling our attention to the Featured Letter in yesterday’s Edmonton Journal, Canadian Tax Shelters Offer No Refuge from Uncle Sam.
In the letter, author Bill Rozeboom states,
Canada is unlikely to influence the way the U.S. treats its citizens abroad, but the Canadian government should not be complicit in making life miserable for any of its law-abiding dual-citizen residents. If Canada is pressured into implementing the U.S. FATCA regulations, this should come with a complete amnesty from the U.S. with respect to past foreign trust filing requirements for Canadian government-registered TFSA and RESP accounts, and also the opportunity to close all such accounts without penalty from either the U.S. or Canada.
Badger notes that, “Finally someone points out in a Canadian newspaper that Minister Flaherty and the Harper government will be COMPLICIT if they enter into an IGA, especially knowing that their pet TFSAs and RESPs (and the other registered savings) are punished by the IRS, and cannot benefit those treated as second class Canadians and permanent residents who the US holds fast and refuses to let live an ordinary life like their fellows here, and inside the US.”
@badger,
Snowbirds, at this point, can fill our yearly form 8840, http://www.snowbirds.org/8840-closer-connection-form.php. How many have the foresight to do the necessary due diligence? Hopefully word will get around to all of them. Will they believe it? Will buyers of US property in the States believe they are at some risk if they don’t do things just so? At any rate, I sure wouldn’t trust the US to not change any of those regulations. Maybe only we US Persons realize that — not the blind Canadian-only snowbirds? I don’t know. I think they may eventually be sitting ducks for the IRS.
And, thanks, I absolutely know I’ll have many with me in spirit in my MP meeting!
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I tried on multiple occasions to contact James Rajotte, my local MP, to follow up on the issues raised by my letter cited above. Mr. Rajotte’s office staff did consistently respond to my emails but I was unable to make direct contact with him or even have it confirmed by his staff that he had read my letter and was aware of the concerns.
My letter is no longer available from the Edmonton Journal website, and the links in your posting above produce “page not found.” When I asked the Journal about this last month, the response from the editor, Brian Tucker, was: “Apparently, stories and letters only have a three-month life on our website. We just don’t have to capacity to keep things online for longer than that.” Probably this is the reason that other links on your site to other articles are also failing.
As of today, my letter is still available from the following link:
http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/letters/story.html?id=3f0c9835-a4bd-44b5-b128-8a166a2eed72
Please note that neither the Edmonton Journal, Canada.com, CanWest Interactive, nor Postmedia Network Inc hold the copyright to my letter, even though this appears to be claimed on their respective website pages. The Edmonton Journal policy for letters is provided on its letters submission page and then in hard copy with the published letters as “Copyright in letters and other materials submitted. . .remains with the author but the publisher and its licensees may freely reproduce them.”
Thank you for providing this, Bill Rozeboom. I’ve put your comment on another thread from this morning as I believe it is also relevant to that discussion: http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2013/07/07/frustration-abounds-as-answers-are-not-received-accidental-americans-born-abroad-to-us-parents-and-not-registered-with-the-us-are-they-automatic-us-citizens-or-do-they-have-the-o/comment-page-1/#comment-423719
@Bill, calgary411, and all;
I am concerned about losing some of the earlier media materials that document the last two years or more of this issue.
It is easy to save documents and online articles by converting them into a PDF. I suggest that either IBS, or individual Brockers start saving these so as to protect them in case they are no longer available on the web via our links. In this case we are very lucky to have the author reading here, who has a record of his letter. But in some cases, the news articles were never published in the print editions of papers – only online. Some of that content is never made available or published in electronic database form (ex. letters to editor, photos, etc.). I don’t know how news and other aggregated electronic databases like Lexis-Nexis treat online content vs. the print version of a daily newspaper’s content – which can substantially vary. I note that many of the FATCA articles and commentary we discuss here did NOT ever appear in a print version, only online.
I note also that for example, links to important earlier media stories – like that alerting us of Premier David Alward’s status as a dual subjected to US extraterritorial taxation (and possibly an OVD participation) (see http://hodgen.com/new-brunswick-premier-is-in-the-ovdi/ ) leads only to the registration or landing page of the media outlet ( October 2011, Saturday online edition of “Telegraph-Journal” New Brunswick ) , and may no longer be available even then. Not all newspapers are included and available to the public in electronic archive or database form, and the very expensive ones like Lexis Nexis are often only available at University libraries – via guest access if you are not a paid member of the University. You might be able to pay for a onetime copy of the content through an Interlibrary loan request, or directly from the media outlet, but you’d have to be able to specify what you wanted, and I don’t know how that applies to non-print content.
Speaking of the Canadian (New Brunswick) premier David Alward story, it is very odd that the other larger Canadian newspapers did not follow up on this, and there has been no further mention of it that I am aware of. Is it not major news when a significant Canadian political representative of a province with considerable crossborder contact (crossings and border communities with Maine) is subjected to draconian US laws? Our major archive of this is from the US – the Hodgen Law blog and this one http://www.rothcpa.com/archives/007332.php .
Further to Bill Rozeboom’s comment above (July 7, 3:10 pm), I’ve updated the link to Bill’s letter to the Edmondton Journal. In case this current link gets discontinued at some time, I’m posting the text of his letter here, with Bill’s permission.
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