Here is something different for those of you struggling with the tough decisions regarding U.S citizenship. Should you renounce or not? Should you become tax compliance with FBAR and FATCA, or not? It is a major decision in your life, and tonight, I am going to ask you to consider this:
Should it all boil down to a simple coin flip to decide?
Before you dismiss it as way too simplistic, I am going to encourage you to at least listen to this latest podcast . You can then decide if you want to join in an experiment the guys who wrote Freakonomics are conducting.
I am extending the invitation I got to go to Freakonomics Experiments.
They have just launched this new website for those having trouble making a big decision of any kind. They think they can help. Should you change your career, take that new job, or break up with a long time partner? Should you renounce your citizenship?
Take their survey and tell them what your dilemma is. It can be anything. They will take you through a questionnaire to help with your decision, and you’ll become a data point in Steve Levitt’s new research in decision-making. Maybe some active Brockers (or passive lurkers) would want to participate. They are promising some free Freakonomics swag.
Check it out and see if it has any value for you. Maybe. Maybe not, but what the heck? Flipping a coin has a certain appeal.
I don’t make decisions based upon a coin flip but from overwhelming inner conviction that such a move is the right thing to do.
*It would be nice to know what Canada’s official response to FATCA will be to help make the final decision.
whether one likes the concept or not, it accurately describes the Place where we sit
@Just Me
Good one.
Speaking of coins, today marks the end of Canada’s one-cent-piece, and a further move to a cashless society, as the consumer will have their cash purchases rounded up to the next 5 cents.
@bubblebustin.
NZ and Australia did that years ago, and it is rounded up or rounded down here.
I’d renounce regardless (if it were me – I’m a Canadian…born here and lived here all my life, and both my parents were Canadian with no ties to the US so I don’t have that problem). My wife is Irish-American…and therein lies the problem. My wife is renouncing because she doesn’t want to open up three generations of family heritage (my grandfather and mother were interned in Canada’s Japanese-Canadian internment camps) and financial rebuilding after WWII to IRS scrutiny. She may be Caucasian, but she married into a Japanese-Canadian family…and as such, her family is more important to her than any US ties.
The decision to renounce should be based up a sober analysis of your current situation, and upon your personal convictions on issues such as citizenship based taxation, FATCA, whether you agree with US policies from a political point of view, among many other things.
But basing the decision on a simple coin toss? That just seems silly.
My decision to renounce will be based on my desire to be free and live a normal life in a land I call “home”.
What’s best for my family will always be the bottom line but that will not make the decision any easier from an emotional standpoint. It’s still going to hurt and there will be anger and probably not a small amount of bitterness over being forced into this.
My husband is understanding to a point. But since Canada will never force him to make a choice like the USG is forcing me, he will never truly be able to understand how I feel about it.
@CHF forever
Here here!
Of course coin tossing is silly and in that light I prepared a letter for the PM and all Canadian MPs in case Canada signs an IGA with the USA. (I better hope this gets buried in this thread before the IRS spies it or monalisa either because it will freak her out.) Please don’t take this letter too seriously though. It is subject to a great deal of revision in the interim — to the point of not enough substance for its existence. It’s over-the-top and plays loosey-goosey with the actuality of criminalization. Truth be told, I’m tending to defiance rather than compliance right now but I could crumple when faced with the consequences of an operable FATCA in Canada. 😉
Dear Minister,
Would you please describe the process of deportation (or is it extradition?) to the USA for me? Now that Canada has signed an IGA with the USA regarding the implementation of FATCA in Canada I expect that sometime in the relatively near future that I will be subject to an indictment from the IRS for tax crime. All I have is my inheritance from my Canadian parents and when I add up just my FBAR penalties alone I realize that the IRS will lay claim to all of it and maybe more. The IRS will also require that I go to prison for 5 years. I presume that means prison in the USA because I have not broken any Canadian tax laws. I have never been a criminal before and I really would like to know what the procedure will be for my “deportation” and where to go to turn myself in. I don’t have a passport so I cannot go to the USA to do it. Would the local RCMP office be the appropriate place or can I offer myself up for arrest at an immigration office somewhere or should I just have my husband drop me off at the border?
Please read my attached story [see Em: My Story in the Participants section]. It explains how I came to be considered by the US government to be a tax criminal. I wrote that story in April of 2012 so I should add that I returned my US green card to the USCIS in May of 2012 but they did not acknowledge my I-407 form in anyway whatsoever. As always, I did not file a FBAR for myself for 2011 and thereafter too. (As always, my husband did.) With no green card in my possession (presumed to be null and void for over 15 years) I believed I would be what I always thought I was and always declared myself to be on our joint 1040s — namely, a “non-resident alien” of the USA (that’s how the IRS phrases it). Therefore no FBAR filing needed for me — at least that’s what I thought. Truthfully I never thought of myself in those terms — “non-resident alien”. I thought I was a Canadian citizen living in Canada. I was born and raised in Canada and never even considered becoming a citizen of the USA or any other country. I have lived in Canada 5 times longer than I lived in the USA. Also, I believed Minister Flaherty when he made his CRA shalt not collect for IRS statement. However since the IRS knows where I live and bank (my husband had to declare our joint accounts on his FBARs) I do expect the IRS will find a work around and confiscate my inheritance from my Canadian parents directly from my bank.
It really is quite a mess and I confess that I wasn’t aware of FATCA until around March of 2012. I tried my best to rectify things but obviously I didn’t get it right and now I really would like to prepare myself for “deportation” and steel myself mentally for the horror of a US prison. I think I may have to find some way to stay in prison in the USA if I live longer than the 5 year sentence because after the IRS confiscates my inheritance from my Canadian parents I will not have enough money to live on in my old age. I’ll need a “home”, even if it is a US prison. I want all the cost of my incarceration until death to fall on American tax payers because Canadians should not be made to pay for it. After all, FATCA was made in the USA. All Canada ever did was agree to it by signing an IGA with the USA. I understand the dire implications of the 30% withholding fee and that Canada had to make it possible for Canadian financial institutions to implement FATCA. I have only what is left of my life to live and since I am deemed to be a US tax criminal because I kept my inheritance (no tax owed) from my Canadian parents in a Canadian bank instead of under my mattress then it must be some form of justice that I give up my remaining years for the sake of Canadian banking. I now await, with trepidation but resolve to do right by Canada, your information regarding the deportation (extradition?) procedure.
Yours truly,
[Em]
For me, I had read, learned, called, inquired, wrote and complained to down to the point where if someone tossed a coin, I’d free myself from the chains. So, when banks told me that I was unwanted thanks to US policy, the coin had been tossed and the chains fell. It was not an easy decision, but a necessary one to lead a normal life. Now that the chains have been removed, I feel lighter and free without the unnecessary baggage dragging me down.
@a
I understand exactly what you are saying. It is what I felt (and still do sometimes) and I kept thinking “surely something is going to give way and I’m not going to have to do this.” But nothing did and I could not live with the anxiety and the fear. It’s over a year now for me and it doesn’t hurt anymore though there is anger. I find that remaining involved whether reading/responding here or trying to communicate to gov officials via Twitter, etc., does seem to give it a more positive spin.
My husband will never understand. To him, it was as simple as if I were to buy a red dress instead of a blue one. He simply did not appreciate at all, how difficult it was for me and how unfair it felt. If it weren’t for the people here, I don’t know how I would have ever dealt with my reaction to it.
@mjh49783
The concept does seems silly, I will grant you that, but don’t discount the difficulty many people have making BIG decisions in their lives.
For some this works, and for some it obviously does not. We are all different. Not all of us are rationale decision makers like Petros or CHF forever and could use some help in the process.
The point is, this is an experiment by an economist to see if he can help you go through a process. If you still can’t make a decision, but want to, flip the coin.
Then, once that’s accomplished, he wants to do some research to see if it actually help you end the internal debate and have a happier, more satisfied life.
So, before being totally dismissive of the idea, Listen to the Podcast.
It may not be for you, and it may not be for me, but for those that have difficulty making BIG decisions I am just offering it up for their consideration. Maybe there is something here in this process that can help.
Note: This was really posted more for the lurkers that read here, agonizing what to do, but do not comment. For those of you who have already decided what to do, you already know, like SwissPinoy, how good it feels to be over that decision hump and not have that unnecessary baggage dragging you down.
Em, that’s brilliant.
Perhaps we should all prepare our very own, individualized letters to be sent to the Prime Minister, all MPs, cc to President Obama and the US Ambassador to Canada, David Jacobson. Perhaps as many of us as possible of the estimated one million in Canada with our overnight bags and toothbrushes could show up at the doorstep of the US Embassy for transport to the US, at US cost.
Of course, now that I have my CLN, I will be acting as a Parent, Guardian or Trustee on behalf of my adult son who has a developmental disability as the US will not allow me (and other Parents, Guardians, Trustees for their like family members) to renounce US citizenship on their behalf.
@ calgary411
Of course! Why didn’t I think of that? We should be turning ourselves into the US consulates. However, I’m trying to think positive (along with Jim Jatras) and trying to believe that we won’t have to pack those bags. OTOH, I do like to be mentally prepared for whatever the future holds, whenever possible, so far as my little brain can project. 🙂
*@Em,
I love the satire, thanks,
I just came across this little tid-bit. Apparently Melissa Sue Anderson who played Mary Ingolls on “Little House on the Prairie” became a naturalized Canadian citizen in 2007 along with her husband. This could be someone else who is in the same FATCA Gravy (for the IRS) Boat as many Brockers are. I hope she and her husband have a competent tax specialist in Montreal. I wonder if either of them has tossed a coin to decide whether or not to renounce their US citizenship. I wonder what happens if hers say heads and his says tails.
http://www.canada.com/topics/entertainment/story.html?id=e41b709e-3b13-4130-a22f-aa2b32e9bcaf
Sounds great. Any result so far?