Many of us who have been part of the community here at Isaac Brock Society, have been writing our various MPs, the Finance Minister, and other politicians on a regular basis for months now to complain about FATCA. The Conservative government ignored our pleas and signed a deal with the devil, selling the soul of Canadian sovereignty along with the rights of a sub-class of Canadians, in return for the removal of extortionate threats directed at Canadian banks.
Until very recently, few Canadians with ‘US person’ status, living in Canada, had even heard of FATCA, never mind USA’s unique to the world citizenship-based taxation laws. Those numbers are starting to increase rather dramatically as is evident by the many new visitors to this website. If all our new ANTI-FATCA friends would also take some time to educate their MPs about FATCA, and ask them to do something to stop it, they might start to think twice about ramming FATCA down the throats of 1 million plus voters.
Disconcertingly, it has been apparent from some of the recent comments we’ve heard from certain MPs regarding the signed IGA, that many are unaware of the grievous harm that FATCA in combination with citizenship-based taxation will do to Canadians with ‘US person’ status. Since it appears that the Conservative party’s intent is to push FATCA through parliament as stealthily as possible, it is imperative that our MPs actually understand what they are voting for, or hopefully AGAINST!
If you haven’t already, and even if you have, please email or write your MP, and help him/her to understand the ugly truth about FATCA and citizenship-based taxation.
Not only USP’s but the spouses and their families need to speak out against FATCA also. Maybe a few employers and business partners who object to the intrusion won’t hurt either.
I’d also like to know what the CRA plans to do with all this additional info they have on the financial affairs of this distinct segment of Canadian society – namely their citizens who happen to be USP’s and their spouses/families.
By signing an IGA with the US government, Canada has officially created a second class of Canadian citizen, one that is not afforded the same protections as others.
2 weeks ago our team called and sent and email to Irene Matheyssen from London Ontario.
She was in Ottawa the week of February 3rd.
Her staff didn’t know anything about FATCA. A guy said called Immigration, later a girl said ‘FATCA’? she wanted to get off the phone quickly.
Irene finally replied. sent info on Maplesandbox. The last paragraph on her own words: “I am sorry I cannot be of more help, but I hope connecting you with others trying to keep the fight against FACTA going will help all of you achieve a victory in the end”
It sounds more like good luck. Is she well educated on this FATCA and the harm it will do to millions if not all Canadians, in her home town, “her neighbors”, our economy, etc. or what?
I think that a one on one meeting with your MP is required. Letters just do not seem to be working. Most politicians want this sack of venomous snakes to disappear and we’re not going to go away. We may end up having to be “in your face” about the whole thing.
Does anyone have something written in French that I can send to my MP here in Sherbrooke?
I have emailed my MP, Chris Charlton, four times since the IGA was announced, but I have not even gotten an ‘out of office’ reply. I shall try to set up a meeting.
What do you think a reasonable response time to an email is for an MP, a week, two weeks?
I hate to say this again, but, you won’t get anywhere with these politicians. They are liars and protecting their jobs and pensions. Until they are in your shoes, they could care less. My MP stopped replying to me in email last week , today, I will be in his office just to see what exactly he thinks he knows about fatca. But, he is only protecting his job and if he can BS me enough to pacify me, he has done his job We are all learning here how Canadian politics works. You need to do something illegal to get noticed. The Natives know this well. Unfortunately, history is repeating itself here. We are merely a bunch of “sob stories” to them.
@NativeCanadian,
Yes, this is true about some MPs no doubt. However, I am convinced that a huge part of the reason that FATCA has gotten as far as it has, is that PEOPLE DO NOT UNDERSTAND IT, and that includes many MPs. Surely, some of our MPs have a shred of morality, and if they actually understood FATCA, they might change their tune, from ‘Flaherty says its a good deal’, to ‘hey this is bad for Canadians and Canada’. We still have to try everything in our power to educate them. If they decide to flush their morals down the toilet, that is their choice, but they need to understand FATCA and CBT, and since our government is determined to keep the reality a secret, it is OUR JOB TO TRY TO PULL THE WOOL OFF FROM OVER THEIR EYES, regardless how little hope we have for the light to shine through.
FATCA can be fought from many angles, and this is just one more, point being we cannot leave any stone unturned as this is one hell of a nasty fight.
And please, in response to the signing of the IGA, let’s all get our submissions out to the Department of Finance. They have established a special email address for us to do this: IGA-AIG@fin.gc.ca
I know it feels like we’ve been here before, but this might be our last chance to get our point across to the government before the FATCA IGA comes to a vote in Parliament. This opportunity is the Canadian equivalent of those offered by the House Ways and Means Committee and Senate Finance Committee in the States last year. Let’s take it!
@bubblebustin:
re your very very good question:
“I’d also like to know what the CRA plans to do with all this additional info they have on the financial affairs of this distinct segment of Canadian society – namely their citizens who happen to be USP’s and their spouses/families.”
Indeed.
Though I never thought of that – since my accts are registered with my SIN anyway, but now that makes me wonder if this is not seen as a side benefit for the CRA and the Dept. of Finance?
That may be another Charter issue – enhanced surveillance of a distinct group in Canadian society – by the CRA as well as by the IRS. Even if the CRA does nothing but automatically forward the data to the IRS, it has collected it and possesses it.
How would the Charter and Constitution allow that automatic blanket data collection, storage and transmission for one group of citizens and taxpayers (based on national origin, citizenship and quasi-citizenship status) and not impose equivalent financial data collection automatically on the whole of Canadian society? Seems like another aspect of the privacy issue – and also of the due process issue. If they do not collect ALL that information from the banks and store it (ex. NOT just taxable interest which is always reported, but all the transactions, deposits, withdrawals, etc.).
Again, where is due process? We have done nothing to warrant a warrantless search, seizure and storage of our data and that of our joint acct. holders – who in many cases are not even US persons. This is true for the CRA side of things as well as the IRS.
One also wonders how Flaherty and Harper intend to explain implementing this craven subservience to US demands – and yet still flatline CRA and other federal expenditures – and reduce the federal civil service. Isn’t IT alone a big expense?
If (as in the non-answers to MP Hsu and Brison) the Harper government intends to state that the costs of FATCA in Canada will come out of ‘existing’ budgets, then something else will have to be cut in order for them to shift money to or within the CRA to pay for it.
…….”In question period, Harper told Mulcair only that one of the government’s highest priorities is “tax reduction for Canadian families.”
“I know Mr. Speaker that their plans would be tax hikes on Canadian families, but we believe in this party we should cut taxes for Canadians,” Harper said.”
Ask your MP:
So, how can they implement the FATCA IGA – from existing revenues, and also – even more absurdly make the claim that they will – still be able to “cut taxes for Canadians”? http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/jim-flaherty-backs-away-from-income-splitting-promise-1.2533641
@all
don’t give up on contacting you m.p. mine took 8 e mails from me to respond. unfortunatly he responded with
“I am thrilled to report that on February 5, 2014, Canada and the United States signed an inter-governmental agreement under the longstanding Canada-U.S. Tax Convention. This agreement brings a series of lengthy negotiations to a conclusion which, I believe, will be of great benefit to dual citizens and Americans living in Canada.”
at least i now know from whence my m.p. comes and who will not be getting my vote in the next election.
stay on top of them. there seems to be a cone of silence in the return of e mails but we have to make them aware that we are aware of what they are trying to do.
Okay, I have an in-person appointment with Chris Charlton the week after next; she is the MP for Hamilton Mountain and is NDP. On a positive note, the person who answered the phone said she knew to what I was referring when I said, “IGA” and “FATCA.” Now I just have to found those flyers that were made up to bring along with me.
I also sent an email to IGA-AIG@fin.gc.ca stating my concerns. My goal has been to do something everyday (an email, a phone call, a conversation) to spread the word. I know it is not a lot, but I’m not giving up.
Since I am the sole breadwinner for my family and have a young child, I shall stay within the bounds of the law.
Thank you Badger for elaborating on my concerns regarding the unprecedented and wholesale seizure of the private financial information of a distinct segment of Canadian society by the CRA. What comes next?
I echo your concerns about just how much Canadian taxpayers will be on the hook for their “thrilling” IGA – and the lack of accountability associated with that decision. I brought up the cost of implementing FATCA in Canada in my submission to the 2013 Budget back in 2012:
“The US government’s Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act will burden the Canadian economy and all taxpayers dearly in terms of compliance costs and privacy, whether the banks report directly to the IRS or through the Canadian government. Parliament should forbid the implementation of FATCA, enacting substantial fines against banks for revealing account information to the IRS or any other foreign tax
agency. The Government of Canada should provide a complete examination of what an intergovernmental agreement with the US on FATCA will cost the Canadian taxpayer. US citizenship based taxation, by taking from the wealth and retirement savings of US persons in Canada, directly takes from the Canadian economy, and more greatly exposes Canadians with US citizenship to financial hardship and makes them less able to contribute to the Canadian economy.”
I’m getting tired of wasting my breath.
@mettleman
What’s the name of that NP who answered you that crap? Name and location so we don’t vote for him/her ever again.
lets pass the word to our friends and acquaintances, so this NP never gets re-elected again, you and we need a leader (NP, PM, mayor, etc) who works for the citizens and the community, someone who protect our rights and all Canadians, not a puppet who goes by and protect his/her own intere$t.
I am meeting with my MP (Chris Charlton, Hamilton Mountain, ON) this Friday. After many, many emails and phone calls, I finally got a response today. See below:
“Thank you for taking the time to write and share your concerns with current US tax and foreign bank account reporting laws, and, more specifically, the U.S. Foreign Account Compliance Act (FATCA).
My NDP colleagues and I share your concerns that FATCA’s sweeping provisions on financial disclosure will have significant consequences for dual Canadian-American citizens and Americans with landed immigrant status lawfully living here in Canada. Please know that New Democrats have consistently challenged the over-reaching aspects of FATCA and have urged the Conservative government to negotiate protective measures for those citizens who will be affected by FATCA’s onerous regulations.
FATCA has come under significant criticism by many experts who have expressed support for multilateral, rather than bilateral agreements and taken issue with the aggressive nature of FATCA. New Democrats have serious concerns about FATCA, and believe that the federal government should increase efforts to work multilaterally with international partners to ensure we are able to combat criminal tax evasion without penalizing well-intentioned, law-abiding citizens.
Negotiations over an inter-governmental agreement (IGA) to implement the FATCA were conducted behind closed doors, exacerbating fears among those who will be affected.
Now that an IGA has been reached, many questions still remain around the constitutionality of the agreement, the adequacy of the outdated Privacy Act in protecting the personal information of dual citizens collected by the CRA, and the obligations imposed on ‘accidental Americans’.
There are some exemptions in the agreement, including exemptions for certain accounts, including RRSPs, RESPs, RDSPs, TFSAs and registered pensions, exemptions for accounts under $50,000 and exemptions for financial institutions with less than $175 million in assets and local banks with 98 per cent or more of account value held by Canadians.
Unfortunately, many dual citizens still have questions about when and how their information will be accessed, and exactly what the financial and legal implications of the FATCA will be on their personal lives.
In taking the lead on this issue, Official Opposition critic for National Revenue Murray Rankin has raised questions in the House of Commons and written to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty during the negotiation process to express concerns about the impact on Canadian sovereignty, and the privacy rights of Canadians.
Going forward, please be assured that my NDP colleagues and I will remain vigilant on this issue. We will continue to pressure the Government to help address the above-mentioned concerns and ensure the rights of Canadians who hold dual citizenship with the United States are protected.
Once again, I appreciate the time you have taken to share your concerns with me.
All the best,
Chris
Chris Charlton, MP
Hamilton Mountain
HAMILTON OFFICE:
232-845 Upper James St.
Hamilton, ON L9C 3A3”
@Suki,
Good luck at your meeting with your MP this Friday! It is great that you are doing this, and very important even though you may think it is not a significant undertaking. EVERYTHING that each of us does, adds up!
Here is my email to Dominic LeBlanc, MP for Beauséjour (New Brunswick) and his response:
Dear Hon. Dominic LeBlanc,
I see from your website that you have addressed the IRS (FATCA) issue with Hon. Jim Flaherty back in 2011. As you are probably aware, Canada recently signed an Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) with the United States in order to comply with FATCA. I want to share my story in order to highlight how FATCA and this IGA will affect innocent Canadians; I know that many of your constituents in New Brunswick are also in this boat.
I was born in the US to Canadian parents who were there temporarily for work – we moved back to Canada in 1967, when I was 1 year old and my sister was 3 years old. As my parents had registered our births abroad to the Canadian consulate, we became Canadian citizens at birth. We have never claimed our US citizenship, have absolutely no link to the US and were never told that we had tax obligations to the US simply by virtue of being born there – had I known, I would have renounced when I was 18 and had nothing to my name !
Under FATCA, the IRS wants all our banking information to find out the value of our assets; this includes any joint accounts I share with my solely Canadian citizen husband. As the IRS considers us “tax cheats”, if we try to renounce/relinquish our US citizenship now, we expose ourselves to punitive penalties for “willful non-compliance”, not to mention accounting and cross-border specialists fees which can also be substantial.
This IGA will force banks to ferret out “US citizens” and pass this information along to Revenue Canada, which will then pass it along to the IRS. What a nightmare, to think that I have diligently saved all my life to possibly end up giving a huge chunk of it to the IRS just because I had the misfortune of being born on US soil.
If there is anything you and your colleagues in the opposition can do to derail this IGA as it is now drafted from becoming law, that would be awesome.
Thanks for your time,
Anne Bastarache
Dear Ms. Bastarache,
Thank you for writing to me.
I agree with you. I remain concerned with the preoccupation of Canadians such as yourself who may find themselves unknowingly punished by the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
For this agreement to pass, however, legislation still needs to be drafted, debated and voted upon. I am looking forward to the Finance Minister introducing this legislation, which will give us a better opportunity to ensure Canadians are not unjustly punished through no fault of their own.
I will keep working to help protect the people of Beauséjour from such difficult circumstances.
Sincerely,
Hon. Dominic LeBlanc, P.C., M.P.
Beauséjour
@Anne Bastarache
Congratulations on receiving a response from your MP, who has the sense and sensitivity to refer to you solely as a Canadian.
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I am floored by this politicians honesty.
I have never ever heard a politician say “I agree with you. ”
This is front page material.
@Anne Bastarache
Great letter to your MP! And congrats on a positive response back! I hope many others are also writing their MP’s!
@Anne,
I agree with WhiteKat: This is an incredible letter from a Tory MP. The message is completely opposite to the one I received from my Tory MP in which the letter was actually written by one of Flaherty’s people and which stated that the IGA is really good news for Canadian. Your letter was actually written by the MP.
I suggest that you might follow up his letter with a short and nice thank you response. You could say in the letter that the final legislation cannot deviate significantly from that of the original because of the insistence of the U.S. You could ask that given the importance of the vote, you and the people of Beauséjour expect that the vote on the legislation will be a “free vote” and that Mr. LeBlanc will be given the opportunity to “vote his conscience” in a way that will protect the rights of all of his constituents.
If you are a francophone, you might consider sending the follow-up letter in french and point out that many francophones (esp. in Quebec) still appear to have no understanding of the consequences of this harmful legislation.
Not to spoil the party but Dominic Leblanc is NOT a Tory MP. In fact he is a very prominent Liberal MP who was once considered a contender to become Liberal leader.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_LeBlanc
@IRSCompliantForever,
I am Anne Bastarache’s sister – the one who was 3 years old when we came back to Canada. I now live in Quebec, and I will be translating the letter and sending it to my NDP MP (Domenic LeBlanc is a Liberal MP).
If I hear back from him, I will let you know. I agree with you that this issue is not getting any traction in Quebec. I suspect that few Quebeckers were born in the USA because of the language barrier, as opposed to bilingual New Brunswickers such as my sister and I.
@Anne,
I have wondered whether FATCA could turn out to be an issue which might raise special sovereignty concerns in Quebec, as a “unique subnational jurisdiction”, given its unique relationship within Canada. Ex. Quebec
“…..Quebec administers its own personal income tax system, and therefore is free to determine its own definition of taxable income. To maintain simplicity for taxpayers, however, Quebec parallels many aspects of and uses many definitions found in the federal tax system.” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_taxes_in_Canada#Quebec
Further to IRSCompliantForever’s comment above, you might also raise the question of whether the FATCA IGA might be seen as an infringement of Quebec sovereignty or role in personal income taxation (as a “unique subnational jurisdiction”?) – since FATCA touches on provincial jurisdiction matters such as the regulation of credit unions, and provincial agreements to implement the PRPP, etc. Quebec went ahead and has already adopted the VRSP – its own version of a type of PRPP http://www.revenuquebec.ca/en/salle-de-presse/nouvelles-fiscales/2013/2013-12-18.aspx . Though the IGA appears to ‘exempt’ Canadian registered savings like the PRPP only from the REPORTING to the IRS BY THE FIs (but not the reporting and taxation of the actual accountholders) – with no other specific ruling to the contrary, it would still probably be considered by the US to be a ‘taxable foreign trust’, thus taxed by them, reportable by the affected individuals (ex. 3520/3520A, FBAR, FATCA form 8938 depending on thresholds) and penalizable – just as RESPs, TFSAs, RDSPs are not specifically exempted under the current Canada-US Tax Treaty. Even RRSPs and RRIFs are considered by the US to be ‘foreign trusts’ – and only recognized by the US as having special tax status with a specific reference to the Treaty and the annual election using the 8891 form.
One wonders what conversations and consultations have been done in Quebec (if any) re the FATCA IGA and its provincial relationship with the CRA (ex. see http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/gncy/ntrnl/2013/qbc-eng.html ), and the impact on the VRSP? I would think that just enrolling in or being enrolled in (automatically, by default) a VRSP in a workplace – even without any contribution whatsoever (and a balance of zero), would automatically create a substantial ‘foreign trust’ reporting burden for employees who the US would define as ‘US taxable persons’. The mere existence of being enrolled in/participating in a ‘Foreign trust’ would be reportable even with a balance of zero?
For those in Quebec, I would ask your MP what consultations – if any, have taken place between Revenu Quebec and the CRA and the federal Department of Finance re implementing the FATCA IGA.
Perhaps a good FOI matter for a friendly Liberal or NDP MP from Quebec – or a matter to raise as a question in Parliament similar to those of MPs Mai, May, Hsu and Brison?
We need some francophones to raise this with the Bloc Quebecois as well http://globalnews.ca/news/1203392/bloc-quebecois-hopes-a-pq-majority-brings-them-back-to-life/ .
Tim, Sorry— I was overenthusiastic and assumed (or I guess just hoped) that Mr. LeBlanc was a Tory.
Hello Sister of Anne Bastarache,
Thank you for translating the letter and sending it to your MP.
Some of us have been trying to find francophones in Quebec who are interested in defeating the FATCA IGA. This issue affects all Quebecers, whether they are US citizens or not.
If you are interested, could you send me an email at CanadianCharterChallengeFund@gmail.com