FATCA Fact Sheet Anti-FATCA Slogans Protest Press Release
AtticusinCanada has received an official permit to protest on Parliament Hill Oct. 16, 2013, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.! We will meet at 9 a.m. in front of Parliament Hill and proceed to the Hill itself once we have a reasonably sized group. Families and even children are welcome if you feel they are old enough! We ask that everyone bring their own sign. A good idea would be to email AtticusinCanada with the slogans you would like to use, so we have as few duplicates as possible.
First posted on September 11, 2013
The mini-protest in Ottawa on Sept 9, 2013, garnered some well needed media attention. Just imagine how much we could achieve if more Brockers joined forces for a larger protest at parliament hill this fall!
Many of us believe that a formal announcement of an IGA for FATCA is just around the corner. It’s time to ramp up with the push back. The letter writing and emailing to our elected representatives has been great, and some illuminating articles have been written by Lynne and Victoria, but we need to do more.
Atticusincanada and I would like to be the drivers towards organizing a larger protest, but first we need to gather enough participants. For those Brockers who can commit to coming to Ottawa for a day, and would like to join us, please email Atticusincanada at atticusincanada@gmail.com.
Regardless that today’s announcement was not ‘it’, it’s coming; Flaherty is quoted from above FP article:
““We believe we are close to agreement and we are hopeful that we’ll be able to announce further details in the near future,” a spokeswoman from the Department of Finance told Reuters in an email on Friday.
ooops, it was not Flaherty who was quoted, it was a spokesman from the Dept. of Finance.
It’s, according to this, about securities. “Ottawa has tried for decades to replace a patchwork of 13 provincial regulators with a single national watchdog more in tune with today’s globalized markets.”
(Reuters) – Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty will make an announcement about securities on Thursday, a government official told Reuters.
spokesWOman…my bad!
Yes, they are going to sign something. What that something will look like is yet to be seen. That does not change the fact that would ought to protest it loudly. In fact, the real damage won’t be fully seen until after they go ahead. As is usual with governments especially any law based from the U.S. congress who never seem to fully understand what they are signing off on!
It’s galling that a lot of damage will be done before someone finally starts talking about it and moving forward to change this to something more reasonable. I still do not think most Canadians know about it or if they do they do not “get” quite yet the impact it will have on their lives. ANY IGA under this odious law is not in keeping with the Canada I know and should not have been even considered. However, the bully to the south of us will get their “something” however NEEDLESS and harmful it will be for Canada.
Our permit for the next protest on Parliament Hill is being processed right now.
Agreed, a signed IGA is not the end of the battle. When asked about an IGA at Ottawa Camping Trailers, Flaherty said he was ‘worried’. If what he is worried about is strong opposition to FATCA, and a long drawn out fight, he has reason to worry.
WhiteKat, we could be generous and assume that perhaps Flaherty is worried that Canada and Canadians are getting the stick end of the stick again where agreements with the US are concerned. Let’s not forget that FATCA is a costly bit of appeasement and Canadians are going to pay for it through higher fees and probably taxes and the long it takes to come to an agreement, the closer it is to 2015 and the next federal election.
@YogaGirl,
Class action lawsuits against the government will also cost Canadian taxpayers. This is going to continue to be a big mess for a long while. I can’t see 100’s of thousands of affected Canadians just rolling over and taking it, and I doubt Flaherty thinks we will either.
I really wonder how Flaherty feels right about now. After vigorously opposing FATCA to the point of having letters published in U.S. newspapers though NYT didn’t publish two others did. It’s very clear that was he able to say “No” he would have done so. Our government obviously has been bullied over this. Flaherty has likely held out for everything he can get. Still nothing he gets is going to offset the cost to Canada.
I thought today why should Canada pay because the U.S. could not, and did not manage its affairs properly. They deregulated banks to the point the banks played fraudster fast and loose. They crashed the housing market, they speculated against bad loans. They got rid of important regulations that would have kept an economic downturn from going so wrong for them. We rode the storm much better because Canada was responsible. Now they want to come up here and scoop up penalties to pay for their mistakes. They know Canada wasn’t going to do that unless they arm twisted.
My hope is that when Canadians figure out what this was really about they will raise the roof over it.
Atticus, I don’t think this is as much about being broke as it is that technology has finally gotten to a place to make this type of surveillance of citizens possible. Sure, they will be able to rake in a few more tax dollars and have a one time shot at fines, but eventually, the scale tips back and Americans living outside the US are either compliant or they have renounced. The revenue stream from FATCA is a lot like the output of fracking for oil. Initially huge but tapering to a trickle.
FATCA is useful for a lot more reasons than money. It’s a good way to know where your expats are and exactly how many of them there are – something they just guess at now. It’ a way to reinforce the USD’s world reserve currency status. It’s a way to keep a tally of assets and where they are kept and to gain the info needed to transfer them somewhere else. It’s a way to exert control over expats and their host countries. It’s a way to force other countries and industries within those countries to spend money after all, if you are broke, why shouldn’t everyone else be broke too?
Flaherty’s not a dummy. He knows that the US doesn’t really consider Canada a tax haven or duals here, tax cheats. It’s a reminder to Canada that we don’t have the freedom to really say no.
But that’s just my opinion. Was reading again last night about Sir John A and early Canada and the book points out again and again that Canadians in the 1800’s didn’t like Americans, didn’t trust them and wanted them to have no business in Canadian anything whatsoever. What a wonderful quality! Where did that go?
It’s also a way to ensure no one can leave the U.S. without being punished for it with their ridiculous regime. That is unless you are very wealthy and even then it’s going to be a very stupid financial decision to leave the U.S. and marry or live abroad.
Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfWk6yRdwMo
Who on EARTH when they marry a citizen from another country outside the U.S. that THIS is what you’d be in for? At twenty years of age nobody thinks that way. Nobody ever tells you about any of this stuff. And it’s so punitive I can’t see why anybody ever marries an American. I wonder if my spouse knew all of this if he’d have reconsidered! LOL seriously!
@AtticusinCanada
I often wonder what my life would be like if my husband didn’t happen to be a US citizen through his father.
another Obama bagman will be appointed ambassador to Canada.
wonder if he has been instructed to use his arm-twisting skills to extort
a FATCA agreement
Looks like the timing for this one was also planned to give FATCA a boost:
@swisspinoy, it also looks like those are people who were actually hiding money off shore to avoid Canadian taxes. No one thinks those people shouldn’t be caught. They know no one here is arguing with that. Sure, I guess they can twist it to perhaps make it seem their issue is ours but, that’s a far stretch to make. Flaherty knows that’s not at all our issue. Kind of a ridiculous stretch. Plus, I’ve seen that number before and was even talking to my banker about it. 550 out of 33 million people?! LOL! Canadians clearly are not tax cheats. Seems like they went through this pretty well and that is all they came up with. Good for them. It shows Canadians in a very high majority do not mind paying their taxes. I sure don’t! I like it that we pay into a society that seeks to take care of it’s own, to make safe communities, to make sure no one goes without health care. Most Canadians feel the same about our system. It is flawed sure at times but, it is far better than many other systems.
I think it makes them look desperate. 550 out of 33 million people. Most Canadians are paying their taxes willingly. My banker found that number hilarious and agreed with me that it’s silly to use that small number to try and show “Canada has a problem” We don’t really. If anything the U.S. is the one with the problem It is well known as a tax haven. FATCA needs to be applied where the problem is not in Canada but, rather in the U.S. And well before they try implementing it over the border. I’d love to see the numbers they would come up with out of Delaware.
Some form of IGA is coming. I’m not really going to concentrate on what they will come up with as we’ll just continue to fight it using Canadian laws. There’s nothing to be worried about really. I hadn’t even met any requirement to have to file. Would owe zero, in fact they owe me so all this big threatening language is crazy for the vast majority of us. The compliance industry loves all this of course. I think it’s good to save these fear mongering posts and articles. We can look back on them in the future as an archive of FATCA’s insanity. Especially in countries that are clearly not tax havens. Isn’t it interesting that those people were got withOUT an IGA?
Your comment goes a long way in taking the wind out of the sails of that article, atticus.
I wonder how much undeclared cash Canadians are hiding in the worlds biggest tax haven, right across the border from Canada?
@bubblebustin, I wonder too. What is most suspicious about FATCA is there is NO real reciprocity. It hasn’t started inside the U.S. and then said to other nations “Here, look what we’ve accomplished, we’d like to expand this to other nations despite the fact there isn’t citizenship based taxation for most. We can still recoup from those deliberately hiding funds.”
If FATCA had started to work inside the U.S. first to show any benefit to other nations at all that would be slightly different then the way they have gone about stomping around like a giant bully without imposing such upon themselves.
@Calgary, I hope so. I remembered the article because it came out in the late spring I think. About the time we had talks with our banker. A woman who has known us for well over fifteen years. She thinks this whole thing is nonsense too.
Be ready for the Ministery of Propoganda. They have a list of scandals that they will release whenever they feel the need.
http://thetaxtimes.blogspot.se/2013/09/whistle-blower-leaks-offshore-financial.html?goback=.gde_3694878_member_275400845
Deciding to release that now, after sitting on it for 2 years, should make it obvious that they are trying to build up the groundswell with Canada.
Mark Twain, sadly it’s easy to manipulate people with the “tax cheat” stories regardless of the age or relative to the population percentage of the data. People see red first and all rational thought drains from their brains. Politicians know this and that’s why they use taxes in all modes so shamelessly during elections. They know that they don’t have to be factual because no one hears much beyond what their own personal narratives allow anyway. If they are planning to release these article periodically to stoke fires and support – figure that it will probably work. What’s needed is an effective counter that has facts but isn’t do laden with them that it will be ignored.
Personally, I would have used the word “atrocious” rather than “suspicious”. It is simply atrocious that the US government expects every fracking country in the world to bend to its will and implement FATCA when the US itself is unwilling to swallow its own medicine.
IMO this is one of the greatest weaknesses of FATCA and is a point that needs to be driven home again and again. FATCA is *not* about negotiating a mutually beneficial agreement. It is about the US imposing, under threat of financial destabilization, a one-side piece of legislation on so-called partner countries. It *may* be understandable that some countries feel they have no option but to sign up, but the least those countries could do is have a healthy debate about it and admit that they’re being FATCA’d by the US.
If FATCA is just so gosh darned good, then why doesn’t the US *lead* the way and implement it locally?
Hypocrites.
FATCA:
– no reciprocity
– no true negotiation
– imposed under threat of financial destabilization
– an abuse of the US’ dominant reserve currency status
@Mark Twain — but really @ the tax times
Holy Tax Cheat, Batman! They’ve found 550 Canadians hiding money offshore from the taxman!
According to Statistics Canada, tax filers make up 74% of the population of Canada. See box at the bottom here http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/130128/dq130128a-eng.htm
So what’s our current population? Say 33 million in round numbers. Of which say 24,420,000 are tax filers. So 550 divided by that makes 0.002%, that’s two one-thousandths of one percent.
OMG we have a crisis! We’re awash in tax cheats!
Sorry, I do hope CRA catches those 550 folks, but please IRS and other Nervous Nellies out there (gosh LBJ had a way with words back in the 60s …), do try to keep a sense of perspective here.
Not you of course, Mark Twain, you’re just the messenger with the link 😉
Or, putting it another way, for every one of those 550 tax cheats, there are roughly 44,400 honest Canadians who aren’t hiding their money offshore and cheating on taxes.
And the American figures are what, exactly? And FATCA is designed to catch how many Americans living in America and hiding their money elsewhere? IE the real tax cheats, not fictional tax cheats created by America’s demented citizenship-based taxation system matched only by Eritrea’s?
Gosh how would the earth continue to revolve around the sun without the aid of Schumer, Levin and company?
@Schubert; What? Doesn’t the earth and the sun revolve around the US?