Liberty and justice for all United States persons abroad

The Isaac Brock Society

21 thoughts on “US PIRG and Carl Levin demand immediate implementation of FATCA”

  2. This ranks as one of the stupidest things I have ever read. @Tim do NOT insult our friend from Ohio, he would not buy into this level of stupidity.

    Leaving aside all the clearly invented and unjustifiable numbers thrown around:

    1. Has it ever occurred to “Form Nation” (or perhaps we should call it “Tax Nation”) that if you have the highest tax corporate tax rates in the world that people won’t want to deal with you – maybe, just maybe they should consider lowering them.

    2. It’s clear that the US regards any country with lower tax rates as at “tax haven”. At this point that would include a large part of the world.

    3. All this offshore money just waiting to come home to “Form Nation” and the threat of high taxes keeps it away. This going on at the same time the country needs money and they are getting it by creating it with their printing presses.

    4. The implementation of FATCA has nothing to do with the issues they attempt to describe in this article.

    @Tim

    Thanks for posting it – hard to believe.

    Levin is apparently retiring and is now getting on in age. If he really buys into the content of this article, I am wondering whether his brain has ceased to comprehend that there is a real world going on beyond the borders of Form Nation.

  6. So how does FATCA solve the international profit shifting they are complaining about? Wrong solution for the supposed problem. But that is the problem, it all gets conflated into the same issue as some homelanders tax evading abroad. Guess they won’t be happy until there is Facebook banking. Tweet your account, and I will tweet mine. That is what they want, I guess

  7. And what exactly does Levin have in mind with; …”Give the Treasury Department the enforcement power it needs to stop tax haven countries and their financial institutions from impeding U.S. tax enforcement.”..”

    Right. So, what “enforcement powers” can he be contemplating, and that the US Treasury can be given that would FORCE other countries? I mean, in addition to FATCA IGAs?

    And I’m hoping that if Levin continues in this vein, demonstrating ever more loudly just how little respect the US feels it needs to show for any other countries sovereignty and autonomy, FATCA will be further impeded and treated with greater caution by Canada and those who have not signed IGAs. Maybe we should encourage Levin to even more elaborate public displays of US entitlement and leaks of his plan for world domination.

  8. This is a complete crock of you-know-what. Seems to be plenty of it going around these days.

  10. “Fully and promptly implement the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA)”, sounds like he fears that FATCA implementation is in threat of being incomplete and delayed 🙂

  12. Even when tax haven abusers act perfectly legally, they force other Americans to shoulder their tax burden. Every dollar in taxes they avoid by using tax havens must be balanced by other Americans paying higher taxes, coping with cuts to government programs, or increasing the federal debt.

    Tax haven “abusers” acting perfectly legally??? — is that like those living in their countries of choice, paying all of their legal taxes to the country from whom they receive benefits? Taking advantage of those foreign trusts, you say we have in our own countries (they are not foreign to us — we hold them where we work, live, pay taxes)? How nice we can be deemed second-class citizens and residents from any others in our countries by virtue of our US indicia.

    As more and more of us living abroad realize the US game is rigged, the more of us will renounce and claim our relinquishments of so long ago and no longer will other Americans have to shoulder the burden of our US citizenship. How dare you blame any part of your debt on us?

  13. @Calgary
    Folks like Levin, Schumer love to confuse tax avoidance, which is PERFECTLY legal, with tax evasion, which is not. Tax avoidance is not a lesser form of tax evasion. When lawmakers (those who are elected to uphold the law) don’t properly differentiate between what’s legal and not, there should be no surprise that people have little respect for the law and are confused about who’s breaking it.

  14. USA with the highest Corporate tax in the World. Why would any Corporation want to report profits in USA?

  15. The more all of this unfolds, the more I realize you can’t serve two masters. The U.K. is also becoming outspoken against tax evasion and even aggressive tax avoidance; but the difference is that they’re not hounding genuine British Expats settled outside of Britain. It’s becoming more obvious that holding dual citizenship can be dangerous.

    When America’s overreach becomes common knowledge, it will be intriguing to see if other governments eventually ban their immigrants holding dual citizenship. I’d imagine too that the U.S. government will grow very frustrated about the surge in expatriation. Even if they don’t start obstructing renunciations, the waiting times will inevitably increase due to the huge waiting lists.

  19. If small businesses are pushing this in order to eventually reduce their tax bill by few extra thousand in taxes, then what about the additional double tax burden for individuals and families in bone fide residence abroad? The main target still seems to be the very rich and corporations that already have legal ways of keeping profits abroad and deferring US taxes abroad. Why does Levin ignore the problems of middle class USPs abroad?

    This is sickening. Where some of the agruments of the small business owners make sense, they are not paying attention to people like most of us at IBS who are not huge corporations or fabulously rich individuals.

    These US small business owners should think on a global scale. The billions of dollars that would be wasted worldwide in FATCA compliance costs will crowd out investment in other areas where business should be active– such as energy efficient systems, sustainable agriculture systems, and new sources of energy. Some small businesses might be in the software business and benefit from the FATCA compliance market, but I would suspect that the cost of FATCA will do more harm overall than the benefits they expect.

    The ignorance and/or callousness of these people is astounding.

  20. @Jefferson, I’ve concluded that we don’t matter. Only big money interests carry any weight…it’s Darwinism in action. I may not thrive, but will survive even though I will have had to gnaw my leg off to escape the trap…I would say that having had to surrender my birthright just to be able to lead a normal life where I live is pretty cruel.

    We are potential targets at worst and mere collateral damage at best. They don’t care about our plight. It’s why I concluded that I am safer just holding a British passport.

  21. It would certainly not help the homelander’s perception of expats being only the uber-wealthy if in fact the only ones retaining US citizenship abroad are those who can afford the cost of satisfying form-nation, the wealthy!

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