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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