38 thoughts on “Republican Party to vote for repeal of U.S. anti-tax dodging law”

1. and the follow on article by our favorite FATCA sympathizer journalist who provides a Compliance Message board for the IRS…

   U.S. global tax law unhurt by Republicans: Treasury official

   “Prior to yesterday … I wasn’t sure that the Republican National Committee was going to do anything on this,” Mazur said. “We’ll see what happens.”

   and Jack Townsend, thinks they are tilting at windmills.

2. I’ve found that Jack Townsend has been less and less compassionate lately, regarding OVDI victims and people caught in this mess.
   I wonder why his tone changed on the subject. Have you seen his comments regarding Nina’s report?

3. What do people do when they feel something’s wrong and must change? They just keep fighting. I refuse to give up. Let those who don’t have a stake in the outcome be the defeatists, or more importantly, don’t let those who stand to profit from our loss deter us. Consider the source.

4. How does a lawyer attract clients when he is against his own clients?

5. It’a a ploy I’ve seen many times in all walks of life, Mark. They fill you full of terror (whether it’s a tax or plumbing problem) and then come through as the saviour to fix all of your problems.

6. The weird thing is that Jack was not like that in the past. In 2011-2012, he was very compassionate towards minnows caught in the line of fire. He seemed to have changed.

7. @noone, remember Jack Townsend is a trial lawyer. That gives him 90% chance of being democrat. He believes the laws are just and right. I wouldn’t want him for my lawyer unless he could see that Form Crime is a crime performed not by the accused by by the state.

8. You guys should see the comments that Just Me gets on the Lunked In posts on the various FATCAnatic groups. He posts the articles that relate to the human beings, and the FATCAnatics come back with comments criticizing what they are working on. People with morals enacting immoral policy daily.

   I’ve seen it at my own work. Real whores enjoying their jobs skirting their responsibilities to the public..

9. Trial lawyers don’t believe in any of the principles of the Democrat party. They fully and simply believe that the Democrats are just good business.

10. It appears that the Reuters article accepts comments. I would encourage IBS members to comment to correct the biased/slanted bent of the report.

11. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/22/republican-party-anti-tax-dodging-law_n_4640467.html

    Not surprisingly, the same article is generating a similar mindless herd mentality over at Huffington Post. It’s so wearying – we were actually beginning to make some traction over there for a while but now that’s evaporated. Any “help” that we thought might come from the Republicans seems to be negated by the simple fact that they are, well, Republicans. In today’s polarized America, that is all it takes for half the population to immediately switch off their brains and refuse all input, no matter how valid the argument. All they ever do now is willingly ignore the message and wait with glee to kill the messenger if it happens to be wearing the wrong colours. I truly believe that the U.S. is doomed for it has lost all ability to engage in constructive dialogue and debate, both within and outside its self-imposed prison walls.

12. Just left a comment over here as well. I would invite the Isaac Brock anti-disinformation information league to also respond:

    http://truth-out.org/news/item/21415-on-the-news-with-thom-hartmann-republicans-want-to-protect-tax-havens-for-billionaires-and-more

    Ok, while one might legitimately question the full range of motives of the RNC in raising the issue of FATCA (since NO political party does anything without political calculus), this does not negate in the least the reality that FATCA is extremely bad law which will NOT achieve its stated goal. What it WILL do, however, is destroy America’s tiny diaspora of about 6-million people living abroad, who are now caught in the crosshairs of an IRS dragnet that was intended to catch domestic tax evaders living in the homeland.

    These people are NOT rich billionaires sipping pina coladas on a tax-haven beach somewhere. They are ordinary people just like you: schoolteachers, students, office workers – you name it – and we already pay, on average, far HIGHER taxes than most stateside Americans, but we pay them to the countries where we RESIDE, not where we were BORN. You see, only America and the tinpot dictatorship of Eritrea attempt to tax their non-resident citizens, or FORMER citizens, no matter where in the world they live. That is the crux of the problem, for every other country on the planet taxes on the basis of residence. Enlightened countries see taxation for what it should be: a social contract where the state taxes residents for services that the state provides. In the case of overseas U.S. Persons (an IRS term), the U.S. government provides absolutely NO services, but expects continued tribute for the very fact that an expat just happened to have been born in the U.S. No other industrialized nation on Earth makes these immoral demands of its emigrant population. Can you imagine the furor within the U.S. if, say, Russia or China demanded the same reporting requirements that FATCA is expecting of them?

    And, just to put a lie to this idea that the growing, worldwide anti-FATCA movement is all just some calculated ploy by the Republican party, here is what Democrats Abroad has to say about FATCA:

    “Although Democrats Abroad supports strong policies to improve tax compliance and limit tax evasion, we Americans living abroad now find our financial lives exposed to a degree of scrutiny – under threat of severe penalties, fines and even imprisonment – to which Americans living stateside are not subjected. Implicit in this stringent reporting regulation is the unfair and unjustified suspicion that Americans living abroad are tax cheats and/or money launderers, which clearly the vast majority are not.

    In the best of all possible worlds, the US would have a policy of residency-based taxation rather than citizen-based taxation, and so foreign financial account reporting requirements established to catch tax cheats would focus exclusively on Americans who reside in the US and shift untaxed earnings abroad.”

    Mainstream awareness of FATCA is just beginning, so it is understandable that the distorting effects of the dysfunctional two-party prism make it hard to see FATCA for what it really is: the worst law most Americans have never heard of, and one which needs bipartisan efforts to repeal. Failure to do so will be disastrous, not only for Americans abroad, but for the U.S. homeland itself, in more ways than I could possibly have time to recount here.

13. @Deckard,

    Your comment posted above is spot on. You articulated the crux of the problem perfectly. Thank you!

14. The DUMBocrats are taking the support they’ve been getting from Americans abroad for granted. So the RepubliCONS are capitalising on the Dumbocrat’s stupidity.

    Lets see if the Dumbocrats wake up in time.

    In the mean time, let it rain CLNs. Taxation without representation or access to public services is plain BS and can no longer be tolerated.

15. Both parties are to blame for the mess we are in, which is why I think we need to act in the primaries. I haven’t entirely figured it out (I am having to have to do an article on this to justify the time I am spending on it) but the Republicans seem to have generally backed the changes in the past (such as the PFIC rules under Reagan and estate tax rules under G.W. Bush) that give us trouble, while the Democrats under Obama made them more enforceable and piled on the paperwork with FATCA.

    On estate tax, overseas Americans had the unlimited right to transfer property to a non-resident, non-citizen spouse until 1988. It was tightened to $600,000 in lifetime gifts in 1988 (over $1 million in today’s money) and the entire total could be given at time of death. Still, most middle class estates would be transferable at the time of death without being taxed if those rules had been in place. There were some negative changes under Clinton, like lack of adjustments for inflation, but it was really the 2001 Bush tax cut that brought in the very stingy rules for non-resident, non-U.S. citizens spouses, effective in 2010 (which makes them hard to trace back to Bush). Under these rules, the family of almost every middle-class, non-resident, non-U.S. spouse will lose a lot. If you are wealthy and in the U.K. at least, you could transfer $5.3 million over a lifetime in annual $145,000 allocations, have the spouse give these to the children and as long as the spouse lived seven years after the gift, the whole thing would be tax free.

16. Seeing that there is no way one could ever get a general consensus of everybody not paying, and the country heads are unsure if they will act on behalf of the IRS in collecting – maybe one should concentrate on the size of the penalities which are surely the biggest problem of all.
    I dunno- one can always expatriate if the general tax costs outweigh the benefit of citizenship. But it is the horror of the penalities which even Nina Olson says are way out of proportion that maybe should be addressed?

17. As expected

    http://www.taxjustice.net/2014/01/24/u-s-republicans-adopt-pro-tax-evasion-platform/

    http://www.gfintegrity.org/content/view/675/70/

    January 23, 2014
    Clark Gascoigne, +1 202 293 0740 x222

    WASHINGTON, DC – Global Financial Integrity (GFI) urged the Republican National Committee (RNC) to reject a proposed resolution calling for the repeal of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA)—the cornerstone of the U.S. effort to fight offshore tax evasion. The law, which was passed in 2010 as part of the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment (HIRE) Act, requires foreign banks to report deposit information on their U.S. accountholders for U.S. tax compliance, as is required of domestic U.S. banks.

    GFI, a non-partisan research and advocacy organization dedicated to curtailing illicit financial flows, noted that repealing FATCA would deepen the U.S. budget deficit by billions of dollars.According to the Internal Revenue Service, the ongoing crackdown on offshore tax evasion—of which FATCA is an essential part—has yielded over $5 billion in new tax revenue, with at least another $5 billion expected to come.

    “It is mind-boggling that a major political party would even consider endorsing a resolution to facilitate tax evasion,” said Heather Lowe, Legal Counsel and Director of Government Affairs at Global Financial Integrity. “Tax haven secrecy is estimated to cost U.S. taxpayers $150 billion per year. Naturally, we urge all members of the Republican National Committee to reject this resolution. Tax evasion and illegality do not belong in the official platform of any political party.”

    bla bla bla bla bla

18. yes, the FBAR penalties (Bank Secrecy Act of 1970) are the most glaring problem, and taxation of “US persons” (1860’s) is the root cause. FATCA is just a big zit on the surface that can’t be popped.

    Repubs O. have a timeline to address RBT vs CBT also

19. Perhaps USUALLY instead? ALWAYS in from “one can always expatriate if the general tax costs outweigh the benefit of citizenship” doesn’t work, Polly. There are some like my son (and many, many others like him — ‘accidental Americans’ with a ‘mental incapacity’) who are, unless something is done to free them being treated as chattel from their unasked-for US citizenship, ENTRAPPED, no way out of the useless cost of administration of US tax return and FBAR submission (for very little or no tax actually owed to the US). You’re correct, it is about the penalties, not about taxes owed or tax evasion. The thing, I think, that most needs to be addressed is archaic ‘US citizenship-based taxation law.’ Did you know the difference between that and residence-based taxation until now? It is what makes FATCA work to pillage ‘US Persons Abroad’ as well as the treasuries of the countries they live in.

20. No time, no time — must go get ready so not to miss my plane to Toronto and the information session there tomorrow. All I could muster this morning is: The Canadians Strike Back.

    Thanks, thanks for your comments, Deckard, and to you, Victoria, for incorporating them into the ‘Flophouse’ as well as you will.

    Thank everyone here for fighting back the insanity and injustice of all of this.

21. Here’s a journalist who may be ready to listen:
    See this new article by Washington Post & Fox News commentator Charles Krauthammer regarding the US attitude to Canada. BTW, born in NYC, Charles was educated in Montreal at McGill.

    He might be ripe for an education in how FATCA affects Canada. His email & twitter feed are:
    letters@charleskrauthammer.com
    pundit7@aol.com

    Twitter:
    @krauthammer

    “Stop jerking Canada around:
    America’s most reliable friend deserves an answer on the Keystone XL pipeline.”
    By Charles Krauthammer, Published: January 23
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-stop-kicking-canada-around/2014/01/23/0398b8fa-846a-11e3-8099-9181471f7aaf_story.html

    “Canadians may be preternaturally measured and polite, but they simply can’t believe how they’ve been treated by President Obama — left hanging humiliatingly on an issue whose merits were settled years ago.
    “After three years of review, the State Department found no significant environmental risk to Keystone. Nonetheless, the original route was changed to assuage concerns regarding the Ogallala Aquifer. Obama withheld approval through the 2012 election. To this day he has issued no decision.
    “The Canadians are beside themselves. After five years of manufactured delay, they need a decision one way or the other because if denied a pipeline south, they could build a pipeline west to the Pacific.
    “If Obama wants to cave to his environmental left, fine. But why keep Canada in limbo? It’s a show of supreme and undeserved disrespect for yet another ally. It seems not enough to have given the back of the hand to Britain, Israel, Poland and the Czech Republic, and to have so enraged the Saudis that they actually rejected a U.N. Security Council seat — disgusted as they were with this administration’s remarkable combination of fecklessness and highhandedness. Must we crown this run of diplomatic malpractice with gratuitous injury to Canada, our most reliable, most congenial friend in the world?”

22. @calgary Sorry Calgary411 -I didnt forget your problem. I was just thinking along the lines of what could show some kind of benefit right now – and work on the rest later. Because it just seems like so much back and forth with nothing getting accomplished but a lot of talk. Then they brag about how much money they can grab- billions- and nobody seems to realize that this is exploitation, like highway robbery, and has nothing to do with the noble cause of collecting “fair” taxes- but only with exorbitant, off the wall penalities. Another abomination is the fact that retirement funds are taxed- but that is yet another issue. I just thought that maybe for starters one could find some sort of sensibility or common sense in the issue of exorbitant penalites. Just trying to somehow reach them- these militant aliens who feel they have a right to us paying their debt. There is no logic in it, really. But where can we make them SEE that? I mean- even Nina Olsen has made this an issue- saying that the penalities are just way out of line. Guess I`m just tired and would like to see one little piece of movement from the other side.
    But I was wondering- now let me try to get this worded right because I dont speak english all day long (for decades) – but isnt there such a thing as a…. legal guardian…. for somebody who is impaired? And then that legal guadian has the right to make decisions for the one who cannot? When my father became senile, I had like a partial “incapacitation” document filled out for him and oked by the authorities- and then he was only allowed to sign a contract with my signature on it as well. That got rid of all the buzzards circling over him and trying to get him to sign contracts with them so they could get their hands on his savings. But over here, we also have total incapacitation possibilities- where a guardian is appointed to make deciisons for the person who cannot. Dont they have that in Canada?

23. I am trying to gett he following post onto Huff Post …. trying to resent a password presently …. but we will see if I get through. The text is here however for others to read.
    _________________________________________
    Good grief. Are you all (at Huff Post) so utterly dishonest? really? That video clip is so utterly off the wall wrong that it has to be deliberate propaganda. I cannot believe that you have done no research about the millions of Americans and Billions of other nationalities that FATCA is set to hurt. The really rich will NOT be affected by all of this. The really rich can get protection in South Dakota, Nevada and Delaware to name just three locations presently (yes, the US IS the biggest tax haven in the world). It is the middle class and the poor world wide that are going to be hurt. Go and do some BASIC research please. Even the Democrats Abroad acknowledge that FATCA is a bad thing.

    I thought that the left wing Huff Post and the Democrats generally claimed to be supportive of the other countries in the world – especially in the Third World and of the poor in all countries. So why on earth are you publishing articles supportive of FATCA which is going to hurt those people hard. Forget the Tax …. but just the Compliance Costs of ALL people in ALL countries worldwide are going to raise the cost of living worldwide – way in excess of the supposed tax take that the US hopes to get.

    It is time that either the US and Eritrea (the only two countries that use Citizenship Based Taxation) change their tax systems to harmonize with the rest of the world by adopting Residency Based Taxation rather than the absurd Citizenship (and other things like Green Card holding and visiting the US too much as a Snow Bird and so on) Based Taxation OR for the rest of the world to clone the US Tax system and start to tax their diaspora in the US – up to say three or four generations like the US does. Wouldn’t that be funny with President Obama having to file Tax and Bank Account reporting forms to Kenya and Indonesia as well as the US or face confiscatory penalties for “hiding” his “offshore accounts” in Chicago and New York and evading his “fair share” tax due to his father’s home country. As for the President’s daughters … accidental Kenyans and Indonesians too …. as will be their children. Same for gazillions of Irish, Polish, English, Russian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Mexican and other people presently “hiding” their assets in the US. Say What ? you are an American and gave up your Jamaican / English / Australian / Canadian / Other citizenship decades ago? …. sorry bud, we dont recognize that …. you sir / madam are a “tax cheat” and are “off-shoring” in the USA …. we hereby fine you more than your assets are worth to make up for the “hiding” of your assets and income from the Tax Administration in Kingston / London / Ottawa / Elsewhere ! BTW we also do not recognize your IRA and 401K accounts so pay up tax on that income that you have stashed there …. and we do not allow deduction of mortgage interest …. so pay up that tax that you have evaded there too PLUS penalties and interest …. Mutual Funds you say? Those we consider to be nefarious Trusts that must never be recognized so full tax on all underlying gains there too – whether realized or unrealized. Can you imagine the drain on the US Treasury? The only people that will lick their lips will be Lawyers and Accountants.

    The ultra rich will look on in amazement that countries can all be so stupid … while they themselves remain untouched in any material way.

    FATCA is absurd and needs to be revoked immediately … it is already damaging countries around the world as they spend scarce resources trying to get their financial institutions equipped to comply (one Canadian Bank estimates its own costs at some $100 million – then again there will also be ongoing annual costs to review every single customer at least once per year to determine whether they have become a “US Person” during the year).

    Come on Huff Post. Lets see some serious analysis and not cheap party hack propaganda. Even a stopped clock can get the time right at least twice a day.

24. Might have to break into Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 — it may, as some of my comments, be too long.

25. The Department of State says that a parent, a guardian or a trustee cannot renounce US citizenship on behalf of a person with ‘mental capacity’ — even with a court order. It’s called ENTRAPMENT.

    It’s all absurdity. There is no common sense. We’re all collateral damage. I could go on — but I have a plane to catch, so I’m shutting down.

    Hang in there, everyone. Keep up the fight — continue trying to educate others of what FATCA combined with US citizenship-based taxation means.

    Thanks, Polly. Stay tuned and keep in touch on your situation. Every one of our situations differs in some way. All injustice.