39,000 Tax Cheats Come Forward Under New IRS Programs
So here we are, back to square one again. A new article by AP hack Stephen Ohlemacher dutifully regurgitates stock IRS tax cheat language in reference to OVDI and FATCA and how “some taxpayers try to avoid penalties through a technique the IRS calls “quiet disclosure”. I’ve already posted a couple of comments, but it frankly feels like pissing into a Category 5 hurricane of ignorance. I would urge fellow Brockers to get on there and help out – this one is really bad. It feels like the clock has just been turned back two years or more.
Not one word about Americans Abroad.
PHIL Hodgen is spot on with his advice
This journalist is obvious just reporting from the GAO report which I posted over here…
I wondered who would pick it up and regurgitate it. Now I know.
Be sure to read Eric’s alternate headline…
http://bit.ly/183ntUT
GAO report reveals OVDP minnows paid penalties of as much as 129x tax owed
I don’t have much time, but did post one quick small comment, and then the rest will have to wait until I am in Sydney on Thursday… It is in moderation…
I am sure that most reading here have not read the GAO report, or the National Taxpayer Advocates report of the problems with the IRS volunteer disclosure process. It was in the 2013 report by Nina Olson to Congress – MSP 8
Title: The IRS’s Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Programs Discourage Voluntary Compliance by Those Who Inadvertently Failed to Report Foreign Accounts.
http://1.usa.gov/VRJVsc
You might want read that before commenting about something you probably know little about.
Here is an alternate headline for you to consider…
GAO report reveals OVDP minnows paid penalties of as much as 129x tax owed
http://bit.ly/183ntUT
but, few of you will. So it goes.
Which makes it even more important to lobby Canadian and other nations’ political parties.
I wrote:
“In one lawyer’s office alone, the IRS has so far moved more than 30% of his clients from the 2011 OVDI into a new Streamlined Procedure which eliminates penalties for delinquent tax filers. This is a pretty good indicator that the OVDI programs are attracting many who should NOT be there. What does this fact do to the assumption that the OVDI’s of the past were being circumvented for nefarious reasons?”
@Just Me,
Everything you point out is beyond the comprehension of the other commenters. Everything we point out is beyond the comprehension of all but a few real journalists. My god, are you not weary, my friend?
Monalisa is correct: Phil Hodgen’s advice is spot on — for those who can, for those who see what most in the homeland think of us, get out while the getting is good. If we who choose to live and work abroad are the traitors, then revoke all of our US citizenships, especially those of Accidental Americans, and let’s, all of us, get on with our lives — or give us real CHOICE. The intent of not doing so is obvious.
No one should retain that extraneous citizenship unless they know the full responsibilities and ramifications that go along with it (along with benefits for some if they so choose). No homelander should choose to work outside the bounds of the USA unless they absolutely understand, with full education and transparency, what their responsibility is. No one should be given green card status in the US without fully being educated and fully understanding and signing documentation on what is required for them to realize their American dream. No one should be allowed to become permanent residents in other countries unless their new country knows all the facts of how they can be a means of letting the US drain that country’s’ treasury. Perhaps, in what is becoming GATCA, we should no longer have the “right” to leave our birth countries — each country can build that fence around themselves. Perhaps if we aren’t paying attention to the sometimes double taxation, penalties and other abuse that comes with such “rights,” we, collectively, deserve to lose them.
@Calgary411
That would only eliminate the element of surprise and therefore reduce the revenue generated through penalties!
Wow! Do I ever wish I had not visited IBS today and read this post. Talk about a witch hunt!
I posted this as a comment to the Huffington Post article:
I AM ONE OF THE TAX CHEATS YOU ALL HATE!
I was born in USA to Canadian parents, but left as a toddler and moved back to Canada where I have lived ever since.
I never went to school or worked in US, and I NEVER PAID ANY TAXES TO US. I have paid a lot of taxes to Canada though.
I am a middle-class person, with an average family income. I am Canadian because my parents are Canadian. I am American because I was born in the US.
I just found out that by American law, I am considered a US tax payer because I was born there, and that I am supposed to be reporting all my Canadian accounts on annual ‘foreign’ bank account reports.
Just so you all know, USA is THE ONLY COUNTRY (other than Eritrea), that TAXES PEOPLE WHO DO NOT LIVE IN ITS COUNTRY ON MONEY NOT EARNED THERE.
There is no way, I will be as honest as those poor folk who just wanted to make right with US and were dumb enough to enter one of those ‘amnesty’ programs to reveal their ‘offshore’ accounts. MY CANADIAN ACCOUNTS MAY BE FOREIGN TO USA, BUT THEY ARE NOT FOREIGN TO ME BECAUSE I LIVE IN CANADA.
Put away the pitchforks people. Find out what is REALLY going on, before blindly assuming that anyone not paying US taxes is a witch to be burned at the stake. Most of us are just average ‘Joes’.
I just noticed that newer comments are posted at the top, which is good, because it gives all us brockers an opportunity to post our comments and actually be seen rather than stuck at the end of 1000 comments where we would mostly go unnoticed.
Have at it everyone! The more the merrier.
@WhiteKat
Good one, I might do one similar. Most comments are of a very low quality there, what a rag the Huff post is.
Mine is there in their 250 word count.
The hate for US Persons abroad is palpable.
That I still have siblings who have to live in the US of so much hate is more than stressful. That my parents did not live to see this day is, for me, a blessing.
My stomach is, again, in a knot.
@Calgary411,
I hear you. My stomach is also in knots, and my nails are all bitten off. I should be doing things with my kids today, but instead I am writing comments like the one I just submitted to this stupid article.
@ Just Me and WhiteKat and any other Brockers who try to drill some sense into the comment section at Puff Po, please know I am with you in spirit. Unfortunately that site grinds my computer into freeze mode so I seldom go there. Thanks for trying and good luck but the mindset of Americans has become a mountain of puffpoo, pretty much too tall to tackle. We saw this recently in Boston where “military lockdown” became the Orwellian “shelter in place” and the people cheered their loss of freedom as though they had been “rescued”.
@bubblebustin
Re: “what a rag the Huff post is”. Well, that certainly is what it’s become. Unfortunate, because there used to be a somewhat higher standard of both journalism and commentary on the site, but both have diminished greatly since Ariana sold-out to AOL. Nevertheless, the site attracts both kool-aid drinking liberals and knuckle-dragging conservative trolls alike, so it does provide a platform for outreach that shouldn’t be completely ignored.
In the end, however, I do believe the US homeland is a lost cause anyway and we should all be doing whatever we can to disengage ourselves and our families from the clutches of a country and a society that is so clearly in a death-spiral. Most homelanders will never understand the six-million of us anyway and will gladly make us scapegoats for all their self-inflicted problems in exactly the same way that only the tacit complicity of ordinary German citizens could have allowed what happened to six-million Jews in Nazi Germany.
Phil Hodgens is exactly right, and so is usxcanada. Sauve qui peu. I’m even tempted to recommend this as our new slogan as it becomes increasingly clear that this is the best we can ever hope for. Those of us who are part of this historic diaspora of US Persons™, whether by choice or by chance, are now like all diasporas throughout history – cast adrift, and ultimately responsible for their own fate.
@Deckard1138
Huff Post, who aren’t above allowing millions of fellow citizens to be thrown to the wolves with hack journalism, find my use of the word ‘morons’ uncouth.
I am with Em. Those sites run some kind of script, and also the Discus automatic connection creates a major lockup.
@WhiteKat
I apologize for even trying to rally the troops today. I’ve seen your valiant comments on HP and the responses to them – I don’t think I can stomach any more of the “don’t let the door hit you on the way out” sentiments. Get away from your computer and go spend time with your kids. I’m signing-off again as well.
I officially give-up on the United States of Idiocy. They can be neither cured nor saved.
Besides, there were 300 some morons who had commented on it by the time I saw it this morning.
One of the “legitimate reasons” cited for holding “offshore” accounts is: “or get easier access to money while living or working overseas” Don’t you just love that! Of course it’s natural to want “easier” access to one’s money in a bank in the country one lives in than in a bank in the US, assuming one could even open a US bank account from an “overseas” address. Such idiots there are in the US! (Once at a bank in a major US city they couldn’t even do a Canadian-US exchange for me for $100 cash. But I digress.)
I’m writing this from “overseas” here in Canadian, happily no longer a US citizen.
… and in case anyone wants this information, it’s also there: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/taxes/09/reporting-tax-cheats.asp
@Deckard1138,
You don’t need to apologize. I am glad I found that article, and have the opportunity to try to enlighten. Even if just ONE person, ‘gets it’ from reading one of my comments, I will have accomplished something.
But, yeah, I need get away from the computer. The trouble is, we are a family of computer nuts, and there is practically one in every room.
When you look at how HuffPo, an outlet that is undeniably leftist, covers these topics, it amazes me that there has ever been any debate previously by a few here on IBS and on maple sandbox about which political party is turning this into a witch hunt. Neither are good. But one is undeniably far, far worse.
“…it frankly feels like pissing into a Category 5 hurricane of ignorance” — You’re so right. It’s hard to have any energy against such willful ignorance like HuffPo anymore. They do not have the conscience to seek the truth, only to interpret and portray this and anything like it in a manner that attempts to advance their political ideology.
(For the record, I’m not a member of either major U.S. political party.)