http://taxjustice.blogspot.com/
The U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) is potentially the most powerful tool ever devised to stem cross-border tax evasion and to crack down on tax haven secrecy. Initially a U.S. initiative, it is now in the process of being adapted and multilateralised.
Now, of course, the Center for Freedom and Prosperity (CF&P) and a group of other ethically-challenged bodies in the United States, have decided that financial secrecy (subtext: for rich people only) and tax havens are very good things, and that Fatca needs to be repealed. They have put together a coalition called Repeal Fatca, which urges support for legislation introduced by libertarian Senator Rand Paul to repeal the majority of FATCA, leaving it an empty shell, and leaving the world once again wide open to abuse.
The CF&P has some odd bedfellows in this group. One is an organisation called the Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights (an oxymoron, as this document explains) and the group also includes the highly influential Washington lobbyist Grover Norquist, who once declared that his goal was to shrink government “down to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub.”
For some very brief high entertainment on Norquist, spend two or three minutes watching this; for an explosion of the nonsense arguments put forwards by the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, read Treasure Islands, or this blog.
The arguments of these people are simple to demolish: like shooting fish in a barrel. But that doesn’t make them any less influential or dangerous. When the OECD made a timid effort in the late 1990s to tackle some of the worst abuses being perpetrated out of tax havens, it was a coalition just like this one, led by the CF&P, which killed it. Read more about that here.
“The arguments of these people are simple to demolish: like shooting fish in a barrel.” I guess when you start from the premise that those who oppose FATCA support tax havens, you can delude yourself into believing anything.
The FATCA compliance industry must be concerned about these repeal efforts that they had to write their Bullshit for all to see!
The last time that I posted a comment to their blog, it remained a secret. Thus, I just posted another secret for them to hide:
He should wear that as a badge of honor. đ
Waste of time leaving comments over there. Even if they approve them they never reply. They just keep flinging their press releases full of ad hominems around like confetti rather than address any of the reasonable, non-partisan objections to FATCA that have been pointed out repeatedly.
Who is behind the “Tax Justice Network” and can they really believe this?
I submitted 3 or 4 ‘anonymous’ comments politely written, but to the point. None have been posted.
In USA, the INstitute of Tax Justice supported the FATCA bill (I read it on GovTrack a long while back). It is said to be heavily funded by AFL-CIO, if I remember correctly.
The May 14 2013 ECOFIN document, linked to by the TJN, states:
âThe agreements being signed with the US with a large number of jurisdictions and the EUâs leading experience regarding automatic exchange of information provide us with a unique opportunity to move from a series of bilateral agreements to a multilateral system.â
I think this is a subtle rebuke of the American unilateral/bilateral approach. FATCA has morphed from unilateral to a series of bilateral agreements. However, there will be no morphing from bilateral to multilateral; multilateral must be multilateral from the ground up.
The outcome of a multilateral approach would be a global system for automatic information exchange. Implicit in this is standardized information: the same information collected and shared by all. As I see it, the US could not participate in such a system without abandoning citizenship-based taxation. Put another way, a global system could not incorporate citizenship information for the sake of a single participating country.
Ideally, a multilateral approach to tax evasion would capture the tax cheats and but leave untouched the honest people whose only offense is being a âUS personâ living outside the US.
For your convenience, here is a direct link to the ECOFIN document:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/199016/Minute_statement_on_pilot_multilateral_exchange_facility.docx
Northern Shrike
The EU already has something called the Savings Tax Directive which is based on “residency” and is also completely incompatible with FATCA. Unfortionately according to our resident Brockers in Brussels the multilateral nature of the Savings Tax Directive is being completely undermined by the large European countries cutting bilateral deals with the US on FATCA.
That’s good news Confrimed by letter I received:
translation:
Thank you for your email to the Ministry of Finance on FATCA.
FATCA is a U.S. law that requires financial institutions throughout the world to identify accounts held by U.S. persons and to provide information to the U.S. tax on the accounts. The financial institutions are obliged to withhold tax on certain payments.
The agreement that Sweden is currently negotiating with the U.S. based on a model that is supposed to basically take the place of the U.S. legislation. According to the model, the information reported to the domestic tax authority instead of to the U.S.. The information will then be exchanged between tax authorities in a manner more similar to the information that is already being done. In this context, the Sweden generally supports the development of international automatic information exchange.
France, Italy, Spain, UK and Germany have announced that they intend to launch a pilot project for the automatic exchange of information based on the model of FATCA agreement with the U.S. and the EU Presidency and the European Commission has expressed a desire to work with this pilot at the EU level.
Tack för din e-post till Finansdepartementet om FATCA.
FATCA Àr en amerikansk lagstiftning som ÄlÀgger finansiella institut i hela vÀrlden att identifiera konton som innehas av amerikanska personer och att lÀmna information till den amerikanska skattemyndigheten om de kontona. De finansiella instituten ÄlÀggs ocksÄ att innehÄlla skatt pÄ vissa betalningar.
Det avtal som Sverige för nÀrvarande förhandlar med USA om bygger pÄ en modell som Àr tÀnkt att i princip trÀda i stÀllet för den amerikanska lagstiftningen. Enligt modellen ska informationen rapporteras till den inhemska skattemyndigheten i stÀllet för till den amerikanska. Informationen ska sedan utbytas mellan skattemyndigheterna pÄ ett sÀtt som mer liknar det informationsutbyte som sker redan idag. I detta sammanhang kan nÀmnas att Sverige rent generellt stödjer ett utökat internationellt automatiskt informationsutbyte.
Frankrike, Italien, Spanien, Storbritannien och Tyskland har meddelat att de avser att inleda ett pilotprojekt för automatiskt informationsutbyte som baserar sig pÄ modellen för FATCA-avtal med USA samt att EU:s ordförandeland och Europeiska kommissionen har uttryckt önskemÄl om att arbetet med denna pilot sker pÄ EU-nivÄ.
VĂ€nligen
Catrin Arhusiander
Brevsvar
Finansdepartementet
or, well, maybe it isn’t so promising. It seems to be building upon the FATCA agreement
http://www.riksdagen.se/sv/Dokument-Lagar/Kammaren/Protokoll/Riksdagens-protokoll-2012131_H009106/
anf 93
Mr President We take extensive measures to manage our tax bases. By this week, Sweden, Denmark and Finland at the ECOFIN meeting connected in to the Anglo-American initiative regarding FATCA, where we are now wide and together keeps on pushing back tax havens. It is very centrally located. We received on Tuesday a deal to obtain a negotiating mandate which also Luxembourg and Austria joined in, which is very important for us to get a automatic disclosure.
This document says “Luxembourgh & Austria joined in”, where as Svein the German Green at EU mentioned that Luxembourgh and Austria gave up their veto Powers.
Herr talman! Vi vidtar mycket omfattande Ă„tgĂ€rder för att vĂ„rda vĂ„ra skattebaser. Senast denna vecka har Sverige tillsammans med Danmark och Finland pĂ„ Ekofinmötet anslutit sig till det brittiskâamerikanska initiativet kring Fatca, dĂ€r vi nu brett och tillsammans hĂ„ller pĂ„ att pressa tillbaka skatteparadis. Det Ă€r oerhört centralt. Vi fick i tisdags en uppgörelse om att fĂ„ fram ett förhandlingsmandat dĂ€r Ă€ven Luxemburg och Ăsterrike anslöt sig, vilket Ă€r vĂ€ldigt viktigt för att vi ska fĂ„ en automatisk informationsgivning.
Swedish Citizen.
I just sent you an email with some copyrighted articles you might like to take a look at. I will add that one of them states that some of the EU countries who have made publically supportive noises of FATCA are privately getting cold feet. It does not say which ones though.
Maybe they’ll back down a bit when they see that the royal family is likely to be negatively impacted by all this.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/06/08/guests-arrive-for-swedish-princess-wedding/2403245/
I sent that angle to Anders Borg & whole parliament, Think it is on the Swedish Citizen post.
She’s certainly got a lot of Money in the Vatican Bank with her name on it
@Swedish Citizen
Wouldn’t this mean that a Swedish princess is now no longer welcome to have a joint account with her husband at Swedbank? If she is a US resident it also means that all the accounts where she is a signatory also are reportable on FBAR and 8938 to the IRS. I can’t imagine her parents would be happy about that.
@Chris @Edelweiss – I think he is already aware of the tax complications. I read that the couple will officially reside in London. The groom has both US and UK citizenship. (He speaks with a British accent.) They are probably even already considering the effects on their offspring in case the children are named in any royal trusts. The groom appears to be pretty savvy about these matters. He works for an investment company based in Delaware and the Caymans. http://www.examiner.com/article/princess-madeleine-s-fianc-under-fire-sweden
He has declined a royal title claiming that he still wishes to work. Who knows if tax implications has something to do with this?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/20/christopher-oneill-declines-title_n_3305675.html
The second article states “Mr. Christopher O’Neill is and will remain a US citizen.”
They certainly must have thought this through….
Although born in London, he is American because of his dad. His mom is Austrian, however, it does not seem that he has Austrian citizenship.
From Wikipedia:
A child born to Austrian parents is an Austrian citizen. If the parents are married at the time of birth, Austrian citizenship of either the mother or the father is sufficient, so long as the child was born after January 9, 1983. For children born prior to that date, the father must have been an Austrian citizen: children born to an Austrian mother married to a non-Austrian father do not qualify. If the parents are not married, however, a father cannot pass on Austrian citizenship, whereas a mother can.
Should the parents happen to marry at some time after the birth, citizenship is automatically granted to the child retroactively. If the child is over 14 at that time, however, the child’s consent is needed.
The Wikipedia article says they plan to continue living in New York – not London, but it might not have the latest info.
Anyway, with their connections, I doubt they will be discriminated against. Double standard…
The fact they will reside in London doesn’t change the fact that she can’t have a joint account with him at Swedbank or that any joint accounts are FBAR and 8938 reportable.
The Swiss tabloid “Blick” has an article on the newest Swedish royal baby having US citizenship and the financial problems that it could bring. A quote: “Like every other US citizen, Madeleine’s baby will have to fill out a US tax return as soon as she earns money”:
http://www.blick.ch/people-tv/royals/die-schwedische-thronfolgerin-hat-einen-us-pass-id2694226.html