Victoria and Blaze ask in the article: How did the “simple premise” of “cracking down on illegal tax evasion and closing loopholes” become an attack on financial lives and personal integrity of millions of people living outside United States, their banks and laws and constitutions of their countries of residence?”
@Blaze: You Canadians certainly have good reason to feel proud. Sydney Australia installed a rainbow crosswalk like that this February for the Mardi Gras parade, at Taylor Square on Oxford Street. However the city disappointingly got rid of it in April claiming the thing caused “a high risk of injuries and fatalities at this crossing”.
@Pacifica777,
That is so awesome. I was looking for one too since we definitely had the weather for it, but my house is surrounded by a lot of forested area, so probably couldn’t see it from here.
@10p PDT, it is still the most viewed!
and most emailed and most discussed. 🙂
It is first in Most Viewed and Most Emailed but down to second in Most Discussed this morning. Any other Brockers care to make a comment? Name and e-mail address are required to comment as a guest. You don’t have to register with Disqus. I got entangled with Disqus once which ended up with them sending me their “news” bulletins. (I like to choose my own sources.) It took many replies of “please take me off your list” and dumping their e-mails into spam to get that wad of gum off my shoe.
Has anyone sent Richard Harvey the link? Here’s his email:
rharvey@law.villanova.edu
I’m still emailing the article to those who might want to comment today.
As a commenter on the article noted, FATCA is truly “not so simple after all”, and was never meant to be:
see
/WhatWouldtheFoundingFathersSay/
“It is a convenient, deliberate and disingenuous fiction that FATCA is ‘SIMPLY’ meant to identify US tax owed on the earnings generated by accounts held outside the US.
Fellow US citizens, and US lawmakers, ask yourself if you would agree to have your US accounts subjected to this type of draconian and confiscatory regime without cause, without evidence of wrongdoing, without a warrant, without other due process. FATCA sidesteps any type of fairness, justice, due process, and any right to be considered innocent before the proof of guilt – and it does so for ALL US citizens and all those declared to be ‘US taxable persons’ living outside the US who have local savings and other accounts where they live abroad – this will apply to greater than 6-7 million people PLUS their non-US family and joint account holders (business partners, etc), as a low estimate.
Here are the actual words of Senator Levin on that crucial point, from his letter of January 11, 2012 to IRS Commissioner Shulman, and Ms. McMahon of Treasury.
RE: Notice 2011-34: Implementing the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act
page 13 ……………”(7′) Treating FATCA Disclosures As Non-‘l’ax Return Information”
“Finally, one additional issue is critical to successful implementation of FATCA’s disclosure obligations: treating FATCA offshore account information as NON-tax return
information to ensure its accessibility to law enforcement and national security communities combating crimes OTHER THAN TAX EVASION.
Although FATCA is structured to address offshore tax abuse, offshore account information has significance far beyond the tax context, affecting cases involving money laundering, drug trafficking, terrorist financing, acts of corruption, financial fraud. and many other legal violations and crimes. Given the importance of offshore account disclosures, FATCA guidance and implementing rule should create account FATCA forms that are not designated as
tax return infomiation but, like FBARs, may be provided to law enforcement, regulatory, and national security communities upon request. FFls are not, after all, US. taxpayers, and will not be supplying tax information on behalfof their U.S. clients; they will instead be providing
information about accounts opened by US. persons. The US. Supreme Court has long held that bank account information is not inherently confidential but is subject to inspection by law enforcement and others in appropriate circumstances. Foreign account information is too important to a wide range ofcivil and criminal law enforcement and national security efforts to be designated as tax return information bound by Section 6103’s severe restrictions on access.
FFI forms, like FBARs, provide account information rather than tax return information, andshould he made available to the larger law enforcement and national security communities.
Similarly, FFI Agreements, auditor verification forms. copies of actual account documentation, and similar materials should be treated as non-tax return information available to the larger law enforcement, regulatory. and national security communities….”
it needs to get up to 133 comments to get to most commented, so the ones with the most effect would be one-liners done in quantity, such as “agreed” “ditto” “obvious” “what do you mean?” “have you ever been to college, or even high school?” “hear, hear” “you understand” “Please inform your Congressman” or whatever
Carl Levin believes everyone not living inside the U.S. needs their bank data collected because they “might” be a criminal. He sees nothing beyond that. No civil rights need apply to you if you don’t live there. Perhaps he should worry about dealing with the issues in his own state a little better instead of completely disrespecting the rights of citizens in every other country in the world.
His above remarks are some of the most shocking I’ve ever seen from a Senator. This is why he never responds to any letter regarding FATCA. He clearly believes it’s alright to presume guilt on every single person. Here he is worse than Bush by far. Body scanners, the Patriot Act and all the rest of it have paved the way for this to be framed as “going after tax evasion” Yet here he clearly states its intent goes far beyond that. Letting it sink in…”you MAY commit a crime” if you don’t live there so we need this NON TAX information. Sell that in the home land Carl.
Who wants to leave comment # 133?
We’re over that now, great everyone! Keep commenting. Carl Levin. Michigan has done so well and is so financially well off that Levin should impose his infinite wisdom on the rest of the world. His state is sunk so he doesn’t care where the money comes from. I am interested to note if any forms of this money, fines and fees get redirected to Detroit.
The reason why Carl Levin wants the information reported by foreign banks under FATCA to be outside the scope of section 6103 is to allow this information to be used to apply FBAR penalties. As Dick Harvey explained, they grossly assume that all money located outside the US is income that was not taxed, so they want to know the account balances and apply the 50% FBAR penalty as a substitute for the tax rate of 35% and the 40% tax penalty (35 x 1.4 = 49 ~ 50). They just don’t care about the enormous injustice that their reasoning can cause when the assumption is false.
And now it is back to first in Most Discussed. Good work Brockers! And check out Just Me’s twitter activity … https://twitter.com/search?q=%23fatca … awesome!
AtticusinCanada, I don’t believe that Levin believes that we, who live outside the direct control of our creepy Uncle are criminals. He just understands that we live outside the ability of the USG to spy on us totally so they can gather data that one day they might be able to fit under the ever changing rules that allow them to call things “criminal”. This just gets back to the power and control thing. Technology now allows the USG an even greater ability to collect data and spy and our varying govts are being seduced by this too. Don’t think that the USG isn’t whispering sweet data collecting nothings into their ears and blinding them to Uncle Sam’s real motives – extended reach.
It seems to me that Levin wants it both ways. He wants FFI’s to supply tax data but at the same time wants the exact same info to not be tax related so it can be shared with DHS, the FBI (which technically can’t operate outside the use) and all other manner of law enforcement agencies.
This means, if it happens, that our data will be even more vulnerable to theft and us to ID theft crime.
It’s getting so ridiculous that every time I read about a meteor drive by of the Earth, I hope it hits or when I read about an avian flu panic in Asia, I pray for a pandemic. Anything really to knock civilization off course for a decade or so. An emp would be good too. One that fires the eastern seaboard grid in the US. If I have to live in a dystopian future, I want Walking Dead not Minority Report.
Ok, I sent the article to Dr Fatcastein himself, Dick Harvey, asking him if he would weigh in.
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Good one, YogaGirl. Better to struggle in chaos than to slumber under oppression.
If I have to live in a dystopian future, I want Walking Dead not Minority Report.
no longer most viewed. Don’t know if it counts if the same IP address opens it multiple times
More on…. Asia Dragging Its Heels On FATCA
While numerous foreign financial institutions (FFIs) are continuing to work towards Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) preparedness, many Asian countries are still dragging their heels to sign an intergovernmental agreement (IGA).
The IRS and Treasury recently announced a six-month delay of FATCA implementation, and experts indicate that the lack of progress in Asia was a significant reason for the delay.Jim Calvin, Asia-Pacific regional leader for FATCA at Deloitte in Singapore, said that Asia has been very slow to warm to FATCA. “I think there is a degree of embarrassment on the low number of IGAs that have been signed so far,” he said. “The U.S. Treasury predicted that scores of countries would have been signed by now. This is a significant problem for U.S. Treasury that it has not signed up more countries.”
So far, only Japan has signed an IGA. Singapore and India are reportedly in talks with the U.S. Treasury, but no other Asian countries have made inroads with the U.S. Some reports suggest that it’s China’s unwillingness that is stopping its neighbors signing their own IGAs.
China, the largest economy in Asia, has been publicly dismissive of FATCA. This month, President Obama did discuss sharing tax information with Chinese President Xi Jinping, but many commentators in Hong Kong and China have suggested that China will demand information from the U.S. if it were to sign an IGA. This may be a stumbling block, as many U.S. financial institutions and Congress have both raised concerns about sharing too much data about American taxpayers.
Privacy is a key issue for Asian FFIs, but commentators have noted that some of the regulations that FATCA sets out go against Asian culture too. Karl Paulson Egbert, lawyer at Dechert in Hong Kong, noted that in Japanese bank customers could be reluctant to answer delicate personal questions and swear oaths, for example.
Asian laws may also forbid nations to sign IGAs.It’s likely that China and Asia will be crucial in the long-term success of FATCA. The large majority of Green Card applicants to the U.S. are Asian, and global wealth is shifting towards Asia.
Victoria has a new blog posting called…
More on FATCA: ‘Simple” Premise Gone Wrong
@badger
Thanks for posting that comment using Uncle Levins words… I went looking for that letter tonight, so I had a link, and here it is…
http://www.bsmlegal.com/PDFs/CarlLevin.pdf
It actually starts on Page 10…
7) Treating FATCA Disclosures As Non-Tax Return Information
Finally, one additional issue is critical to successful implementation of FATCA’s disclosure obligations: treating FATCA offshore account information as non-tax return information to ensure its accessibility to law enforcement and national security communities combating crimes other than tax evasion.
@usxcanada and YodaGirl
You two should join up for tweeting. That made a good one. Sorry to plagiarize, but too good to pass up. 🙂 You both have the way with the phrases! Here is how to put it into 140 characters…
Better 2 struggle in chaos than to slumber under oppression. If I have 2 live in a dystopian future, I want Walking Dead not Minority Report
If anyone mentions The Rapture in any serious context, I’m out of here.
Thank you all for the comments here and on The Hill. It’s been quite a week and it’s so gratifying to watch the article make its way around the world. Hell if IRS and Treasury and State refuse to communicate about CBT/FBAR/FATCA to the people concerned by it, then I guess we have to do it for them, right? 🙂
I was particularly pleased to see this post by Greg in Thailand (he has a wonderful blog that I highly recommend) called Is FATCA Doomed?
http://americanexpatchiangmai.com/is-fatca-doomed/