http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20131211/lead/lead71.html
The Canadian government surely is not going to sit by and see its neighbour collect billions from its citizens living abroad and do nothing. So while Canada doesn’t have its own FATCA yet, it does have a FATCA-like system that went into high gear earlier this year after the budget was read.
The country is trying to collect money from the many Canadians living abroad and Canadian residents.
In the 2013 budget, the Canadian government instituted a new requirement for certain financial intermediaries to report to the Canadian Revenue Agency – the Canadian equivalent of the American IRS – all electronic funds transfers of $10,000 or more, and instituted a new whistle-blowing programme to stop international tax evasion.
As part of the new initiative, Canada has foreign-income verification reporting for 2013. If a Canadian who is resident in Canada owns the cumulative property, in excess of $100,000, at any time during the year, they must declare it. Failure to do so will result in a fine of $25 per day.
The properties that the Canadian government is interested in are: bank accounts, shares in foreign corporations, shares of Canadian corporation on deposits with foreign brokers, debts owed by non-residents, interest in partnership that hold specified foreign property, interest in foreign mutual fund, foreign lands and building and tangible and intangible properties located outside Canada.
FATCA is one of the most far-reaching tax laws that was ever envisioned by any government. Its effects are deadly and will surely reduce tax evasions, by not just Americans, but citizens of other nations, as we can see many countries, such as the UK and Canada, are adopting some FATCA-like model to improve their budgets, from money that may be offshore.
While some people in the United States Congress believe FATCA should be repealed, that is unlikely to happen, given the amount of money that the IRS has collected since FATCA became law in 2010.
Not surprised.
Trudeau’s economic wunderkid, Freeman, babbles nonsense like this in addition to other things that are uncomfortably American.
And Harper is more simpatico with the US than he lets on.
There was an article not long ago pointing out that the ramping CRA crackdown on tax evaders falls more heavily on small fish than big ones. The way of the world as there are more small than big fish and big fish have better accountant and lawyers.
I really don’t expect the idea of citizens as debt slaves to go the way of the dinosaur anytime soon.
Misleading: “While some people in the United States Congress believe FATCA should be repealed, that is unlikely to happen, given the amount of money that the IRS has collected since FATCA became law in 2010.”
Has someone started withholding when those who will be doing the withholding have just requested a 6 month delay? “The Information Reporting Program Advisory Committee (IRPAC)* has recommended that the IRS continue to take into account the time needed by withholding agents and their customers to implement FATCA in an orderly manner.”
http://www.fsitaxposts.com/2013/12/10/irpac-recommends-6-month-fatca-postponement-withholding-agents/
That’s good news indeed. I’m all for the feds going after tax cheats. Maybe the increased tax collection will lower my taxes such that I can better afford the taxes that I already pay. Tax cheats in all countries deserve whatever their country’s laws do to them. Just don’t bother people who are not cheats or not resident in the country doing the collection.
I think this is a non-story. Don’t get excited.
Canada, like all OECD countries, taxes its citizens and residents on their world-wide income. The Government of Canada wants to take measures to improve compliance, such as reporting on the movement of funds, etc. I have had a quick look at the Budget in Brief (issued with the budget) and there is nothing I see that indicates Canada wants or intends to tax Canadian citizens living abroad.
Just to clarify this Jamaican tax lawyer in my opinion has no idea what he is talking about if anyone was mistakenly taking this article seriously. However, this is what seems to pass for discourse about FATCA in much of the world.
@Tim
Or he may be deliberately misleading. Consider the source.
I saw a VERY poorly done report on RT video last week and was really surprised as their reporting is usually much better. It was about Americans giving up citizenship over FATCA but, honestly my high school did better reports than that one was.
Awful lack of investigation and really very little understanding of the issue at all. It looked like a rushed report done at the last minute with “facts” garnered over a dinner conversation. Just horrible and misleading.
This is in that same genre. Really though when you think about it there is homework involved to report on these issues and very few if any lawyers or reporters these days are doing their homework. I must say McClatchy impressed me as well as a few others lately.
Sweden had added a question on its declaration last year—check the box yes or no if you had accounts outside the country.
Meanwhile, Sweden passed its budget for next year. In the budget it calls FATCA an interesting puzzle piece of the OECD GATCA info exchange. Perhaps that is the Swedish way of passing legislation, or the Swedish way of not passing FATCA legislation, or of avoiding the issue long enough so that time makes the decision for them—which indeed is very much the Swedish way.
This author has written several articles in the Gleaner. IMHO they were inappropriately enthusiastic, fear-mongering and mis-informative. In one he claimed that FATCA was a BIG & EXCITING opportunity for Jamaica. He is just guest columnist and is likely looking to increase his own practice with “advertorial” content, which is actually a pretty standard way for lawyers to build their marketing profile.
“A big exciting opportunity for Jamaica?” O.M.G. as the kids say.
Does he live on another planet where poverty is not rampant in Jamaica? Where there are people who have to leave there to simply make any kind of living at all if they even lucky enough to “go foreign” as the Jamaicans call it. They are so poor in many areas that when these wandering Jamaicans return home they are seen as “rich” by others and are at risk for being targeted in their communities for break ins, stealing, robberies” pon da road!” If your neighbours know you went foreign and are returning as they surely will since there are no secrets in those communities then the poor will look with envy and it’s well known you have to be very, very careful. For that reason many I know there who did return ended up leaving and going foreign again. But where poverty is, there is also lots of crime.
To say that even the most average of citizens living in Jamaica could afford this “tax lawyer” is horribly insensitive to the issues there. There ARE Americans there many married to JA citizens. However, if you think our situation is bad? Well, go there and look around you. It is NOT uncommon to see houses where there is no running water or indoor plumbing. It is NOT uncommon for people to not be able to send their children all the way through school as they cannot afford uniforms, pens, paper, pencils. Hell, I’ve even had kids look at me like I was Santa Claus for giving them a new toothbrush! I mean with a type of glee reserved for Christmas morning here.
I’ll shut up but, that man has really, really got me angry. “Opportunity for Jamaica” No, just another opportunity for leaching monies out of that country to the U.S. It’s already bad there since most of the rich hotel owners are NOT Jamaican. They pay a pittance to the workers and do not put the money back in the local economies nearly to the level they should. FATCA will make criminals out of very poor people there and that is all it will do. People who are trying the best they can to make do with what little they have. There is a very, very small burgeoning middle class there….not what we think of as middle class in most cases either. It is immoral in the extreme for this man to claim for his own benefit that FATCA will help Jamaica. Disgusting!
I think he did an awesome cut and paste job. If I was his 6th grade teacher, and I’d never heard of FATCA, or bothered to google it before I graded his paper, I’d give him an A.
Sadly what passes for “journalism” these days is to let a self-interested individual write piece like this – its free content for the paper. Any kind of balanced responsible journalism would have included pointed questions and sought different opinions from diverse sources – like the CBC Radio coverage. Also, it would have been fact-checked by an independent researcher. This is just “hand-out” journalism: an exchange of free advertising for free content. It is not journalism, it is not reporting by any definition.
But print journalism itself is in trouble, so don’t look to the press to save the day with a big controversial scoop anytime soon.